Hand in hand with playing to Chinese viewers comes working with Chinese censors. While experts say that the navigating Chinese rules and mores is still more of an art than a science, it’s generally accepted that red flags are raised when you disparage the image of the People’s Army or police, show obscene or vulgar content, feature ghosts or the supernatural, show mistreatment of prisoners, advertise religious extremism, display excessive drinking or smoking, or oppose the spirit of law.
And if you dare go off script while shooting in China, prepare for punishment. According to Cain, during a shoot a few years ago in Shanghai, the director decided to change things up a bit and film a take with an extra holding a camcorder pretending to tape a movie at a theater. Sensitive to their reputation as the source of a large chunk of the world’s movie piracy, China told the team their movie would be shut down.
“We begged and pleaded and promised to keep the film on track,” Cain told us. “The lesson there was that there is always someone watching.”
So I watched the pilot for the new television show Arrow, which is based on the DC superhero Green Arrow. The show begins with Oliver Queen (soon to be Arrow) shipwrecked on a desert island. During his time stranded, Queen has developed superhuman strength and agility, and curiously has also become a master bowyer and fletcher, and has learned to hack computer systems. Queen is then rescued and returns to Starling City (in the original comic it was Star City), a city apparently populated entirely by beautiful young people and homeless.
I was never into the DC universe, but I understand that Green Arrow was a liberal superhero, and I have to say, they nailed it. Once Queen becomes Arrow, his first act is to assault one Adam Hunt (a generic wealthy man who happens to be one of the few unattractive people in the city). He disables or kills Hunt’s bodyguards and extorts him for several million dollars. When Hunt refuses to hand over the demanded money by Queen’s deadline, Queen invades Hunt’s home, disabling or killing several more bodyguards, and hacks his computer to steal the money. He then anonymously distributes the money to the needy.
We know that Queen’s violent criminal conduct is morally okay, because his ex-girlfriend is leading a class-action lawsuit against Hunt for unspecified misdeeds, and because Hunt’s name is on a list of bad people that Queen’s father gave him just before he died.
Queen incidentally happens to be a billionaire, but nevertheless he finances his do-goodery with stolen money, rather than with his own.
I don’t know how well Arrow’s producers have captured the essence of Green Arrow (I always assumed he was more of a superhero and less of a supervillain), but I do think they have done an excellent job of capturing the essence of the Occupy Wall Street wing of modern liberalism.
In honor of last night’s Superbowl loss by the New England Patriots, I’d like to share a flashback to the game in 2007 in which I learned to despise the Patriots. It wasn’t the infamous game in which the Patriots were caught recording their opponents’ defensive signals; it was a forgotten late-season game against the Miami Dolphins.
The Patriots had the league’s best record at 14-0; the Dolphins had the worst record at 1-13. I happened to see a bit of the game in the fourth quarter. The Patriots led 28-7 and had a fourth down at the Miami 26. Despite being in field goal range, and despite their 3-touchdown lead against the league’s worst team, they went for the fourth-down conversion.
I’ve never seen a more blatant display of running up the score in professional football. Rather than simply kick the field goal and extend their lead to an insurmountable 24 points, they instead tried to humiliate the league’s worst team with a passing conversion on fourth-and-long. (As it turned out, Brady was sacked on the play, which gave me some measure of satisfaction.) I had no particular feeling for the Dolphins, but I was appalled by the lack of sportsmanship.
Cracked writes that video games are getting much better (warning: adult language):
Gamers tend to complain a lot about the state of modern gaming. . . But then I stopped and realized: We have all of these amazing, fantastic, borderline magical creations in our hands that, in many ways, dwarf all the wildest predictions of yesteryear — and we’ve got the [temerity] to stand around and [complain] that they’re taking too long to load. . .
THE Red Cross is investigating whether 600 million gamers are violating the Hague and Geneva conventions when they kill and blow stuff up for fun.
Delegates at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Crescent raised the concerns over the potential “International Humanitarian Law” violations during a workshop in Geneva.
I would just emphasize that the International Red Cross is a distinct organization from the American Red Cross. The latter is a valuable institution, the former isn’t good for much.
LONG POSTSCRIPT: Glenn Reynolds — where I first saw this story — has pulled back from it, posting a link to what he calls the ICRC response. It says:
[Q.] A few media reported that certain virtual acts performed by characters in video games could amount to serious violations of the law of armed conflict. Is this correct?
[A.] No. Serious violations of the laws of war can only be committed in real-life situations, not in video games.
Sounds pretty reasonable (although note the use of the word “serious”), but this is not a response to the story. It’s from a FAQ dated August 12, 2011. That’s over three months before the conference took place so it cannot address reports of what actually took place at the conference. Moreover, the conference’s daily bulletin issued December 1 reports this:
While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law (IHL) worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL. Exactly how video games influence individuals is a hotly debated topic, but for the first time, Movement partners discussed our role and responsibility to take action against violations of IHL in video games. In a side event, participants were asked: “what should we do, and what is the most effective method?” While National Societies shared their experiences and opinions, there is clearly no simple answer. There is, however, an overall consensus and motivation to take action.
From their own report, it seems clear that the article is accurate. The organization’s actual response was appended to the article:
Update: After this story was published, Red Cross International said the organisation would not be discussing the matter any further beyond the initial workshop. . .
“Serious violations of the laws of war can only be committed in real-life situations, not in video games,” Mr Farnoudi told news.com.au.
Okay, I’m glad they’re backing away, but still note the use of the word “serious”. They are evidently sticking to the position that gaming can violate international law, just not in a “serious” way.
I hadn’t known this: Video-game consoles have been illegal in China since 2000.
The reason is a good lesson in the law of unintended consequences. According to Kotaku.com, “the government thought [the ban] was the best way to protect Chinese youth from wasting their minds on video games.” The effect was to push youths into on-line gaming instead. That’s World of Warcraft and the like, which we all know are hardly addictive at all. Oops.
Jon Stewart is not a nice guy, he only plays one on tv:
Comedian Steven Crowder embarrassed Stewart by publishing an email explaining that the Daily Show never books conservative pundits. (Apropos to this.) His producer then complained to Crowder’s agent, who felt he had no choice but to drop Crowder as a client.
It’s not the ban on conservative pundits I object to. As I say: that’s par for the course. But Crowder has as much right to publicize that ban as Stewart has to put it in place. After all, if Stewart is ashamed of the policy, he should stop it. If he’s not ashamed, he shouldn’t mind when it becomes public. The Daily Show’s response to Crowder’s video was simply despicable.
Consumers are used to paying $60 each for videogames that run on consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Now the publisher behind the industry’s biggest videogame franchise—”Call of Duty”—is about to find out whether it can get them to pay a monthly bill, too.
Activision Blizzard Inc. plans to launch an online service called Call of Duty Elite this fall that will work with the next major edition of the game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,” and future installments of the hyper-realistic combat-simulation game. In a move industry executives describe as a first, Activision plans to charge a monthly subscription fee for the service, which will provide extra content that isn’t offered on game discs sold in stores, including downloadable map packs that give players new “Call of Duty” levels to play.
An Activision official added that multiplayer would continue to be free (with the purchase of the game, of course):
COD Elite will be free to all COD players – paid aspects TBD, and as promised, no charge for MP. Many more details in the AM.
It’s not hard to see why they would want to do this. There’s a lot of money in those monthly fees. It’s much harder to see what service they could offer that would be paying for. They would need to offer an ongoing service, like an MMO. (Even World of Warcraft, the most successful MMO, is a rip-off in my opinion. For a monthly fee they need to offer five-nines availability (or at least four-nines) and regular new content, and they are nowhere close to either.)
I can’t see paying a regular fee for occasional new content. Besides which, there’s no evidence that they can deliver good new content on a regular basis — the single-player content has been crappy in every COD game other than COD4.
I can’t see paying for multiplayer as it exists now. Currently, multiplayer games are run on individual consoles that communicate amongst themselves, with matchmaking done over Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. There’s no role there for them to play to justify a fee.
Electronic Arts has deliberately put themselves in the middle of the multiplayer experience by requiring that gamers play on their servers, but the way they’ve done it doesn’t actually provide any benefit to the gamer. Plus, it leaves gamers hostage to EA servers that go down. That’s not a model for a successful pay service.
The one thing I could see paying for is lag-free games. If they could offer that, I would consider paying for it. But they would need to provide five-nines availability and the same flexibility we have now. I doubt they can do it. Moreover, from the description it doesn’t sound like that’s what they are talking about.
UPDATE: This makes it sound as though Call of Duty Elite is something like a stats-tracking service. That strikes me as strange; I can’t see people paying more than a pittance for such a thing.
But the latest guidance on television programming from the State Administration of Radio Film and Television in China borders on the surreal – or, rather, an attack against the surreal.
New guidelines issued on March 31 discourage plot lines that contain elements of “fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking.”
A new study has found that playing video games trains people to make correct decisions faster, and that skill applies to everyday activities as well. Interestingly, the effect applies to “action video games” but not “slow-moving strategy games”.
Shark attack films are much more lucrative than seems possible:
THIS month the Discovery Channel is treating American and European viewers to a frenzy of sharks. . . Discovery has been churning out shark programmes for 23 years. Yet ratings are sound. Nature sells.
Indeed, it is one of the best businesses in media. Discovery Communications, which also owns Animal Planet, TLC and a few smaller channels, made a profit of $372m in the second quarter of this year. That is about as much as the film studios of Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros put together.
I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS
Fox News, which has not yet been turned over to the death cult, adds:
Cusack could also be doing his career some damage. Image consultant Michael Sands says that Cusack should be worried that his vituperative words could turn off some of his fans.
The notion that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed is a foundational principle of the American experiment. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed. Sixty-two percent (62%) say it does not, and 15% are not sure.
An ESPN soccer announcer says he’s told that North Korea’s fans at the World Cup aren’t North Korean soccer fans at all; they are handpicked Chinese actors.
Activision Blizzard (which owns the Infinity Ward studio) is withholding promised bonuses for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in an effort to force employees to stay and work on Modern Warfare 3. The effort doesn’t seem to be working; 26 employees have left Activision so far since the Infinity Ward meltdown began.
The Call of Duty franchise isn’t dead, but it’s probably put out its last good game. With Infinity Ward going down the tubes, the franchise will probably end up in the hands of the Treyarch studio, which developed the series’s bad installments.
Much of the Infinity Ward studio is reforming as Respawn Entertainment. Unfortunately, it looks like Respawn will be a part of EA, which is also a bunch of weasels.
I recently saw a film entitled This Film is Not Yet Rated, an attack documentary against the MPAA film ratings board. Despite being generally pre-disposed to dislike the MPAA, I found the film thoroughly unconvincing.
The basic problem with the movie is that it doesn’t understand what censorship is. Censorship is not when someone fails to forge the business deals necessary to produce and disseminate his speech. Were that the case, millions of aspiring writers and directors would be being “censored” all the time when no one agrees to produce their movie. No, censorship is when a group of people do forge the consensual business deals necessary to produce and disseminate speech, and a third party comes in to stop it. That third party is typically the government, but of late it has often been Muslim pressure groups bringing threats of violence.
There’s no third party in the MPAA system. If a theater wants to show an NC-17 movie, no one is stopping them, and some do. However, most theaters have voluntarily decided not to show movies rated NC-17, and most advertising media have voluntarily decided not to air commercials for such movies. These companies have made the business decision to trust the MPAA’s ratings, and consequently an unfavorable rating keeps producers from forging the business deals needed to garner a wide audience. This isn’t censorship; it’s free enterprise.
In one astonishing interview, a lawyer who (honest to God) is labeled as a “First Amendment Attorney” says that we would be better off with a government censorship board than the MPAA. At that point it became pretty clear not to take the movie seriously.
The movie does make one allegation that might hold water: it claims that the MPAA is much easier on studio films than independent films. The movie’s evidence is not exactly airtight, but the charge is quite plausible since the studios fund the MPAA. If true, it’s still not censorship, but it is anti-competitive behavior that is probably illegal. But if anyone has ever sued the MPAA over its ratings on anti-trust grounds, I can’t find evidence of it.
But apart from that point, the whole movie takes a far more indignant tone than it is entitled to. The MPAA reviews movies, and they don’t like the reviews.
The movie does argue convincingly that the MPAA ratings are fairly arbitrary. They also argue that the ratings favor some potentially objectionable material over other (e.g., violence over sex, and heterosexual sex over homosexual sex). Most of those preferences seem unsurprising, since in most cases the raters seem to be reflecting the prevailing social mores.
A summary of the movie would be incomplete if it did not mention the investigation plot. The movie takes issue with the fact that the raters’ identities are unknown, and much of the movie is dedicated to a private investigator’s effort to learn their identities. The effort is successful, and it turns out the demographics of the raters are not precisely what is suggested by the MPAA. (For instance, most of them do not have young children.)
A summary would also be incomplete if it did not mention that parts of the movie are very difficult to watch. The movie is rife with clips from scenes of various movies than earned them NC-17 ratings. The apparent reason for the inclusion of these clips is to ensure that the movie itself received an NC-17 rating. The narrator/director pretends to be upset by this utterly unsurprising development, but without it the film could not have its third act in which he laughably attempts to fight the rating.
At least I can still despise the MPAA for its support of copyright extension and the DMCA.
I liked this ad. In fact this and the Tebow ad are the only ones I remember in a positive light.
For some reason, the ad that they have up now isn’t quite the same one as aired last night. Last night, the flight the guy googled was DL-something, now it’s AA120. Also, I think some of the background chatter is different. That seems insignificant; I wonder why they decided to change it. (Alas, a Google search does not answer the question.)
Fifty years after jazz legend Miles Davis recorded “Kind of Blue,” the House voted Tuesday to honor the landmark album’s contribution to the genre.
Davis collaborated on the record with saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb.
Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who sponsored the measure, said the group “made musical history and changed the artistic landscape of this country and in some ways the world.” The resolution recognizing the album’s 50th anniversary passed on a 409-0 vote.
I don’t know enough about jazz to say whether Blue Train is the best ever, but it’s definitely among the best. I wish Congress spent more time on meaningless (i.e., harmless) stuff like this.
It’s an intriguing paradox–the success of a film as technologically elaborate and ambitious as James Cameron’s Avatar will come down to a simple question: Will audiences marvel at the movie’s groundbreaking production methods enough to forgive Cameron’s curious choice to frame everything on a script that is, almost above all else, obsessed with the evils of technology in the wrong hands? . . .
Unlike Lucas’ more playful science fiction epic, Cameron reaches for a heavy environmental message. Avatar is every militant global warming supporter’s dream come true as the invading, technology-worshiping, environment-ravaging humans are set upon by an angry planet and its noble inhabitants. But the film’s message suffers mightily under the weight of mind-boggling hypocrisy. Cameron’s story clearly curses the proliferation of human technology. In Avatar, the science and machinery of humankind leads to soulless violence and destruction. It only serves to pollute the primitive but pristine paradise of Pandora.
Of course, without centuries of development in science and technology, the film putting forth this simple-minded, self-loathing worldview wouldn’t exist. You’d imagine Cameron himself would be bored to tears on the planet he created. There are no movies on Pandora, so he’d be out of a job. The Na’vi rarely visit a multiplex. They sit around their glowing trees, chanting; they don’t build and sink titanic ocean liners, and they don’t construct deep-sea mini-subs enabling certain filmmakers to spend countless days exploring said cruise ships.
Popular Mechanics has an interesting article about how Halo 3: ODST came to pass. The article is right that ODST did a great job of creating a new game with Halo 3 gameplay but a very different feel.
But they also make a mistake by crediting ODST with the idea of rapidly developing a new story on an existing engine. The idea goes back at least as far as Half-Life 2 Episode One (great game, awful name). And it’s been used in several shooters since, including GRAW 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2.
I also think the staying power of ODST isn’t going to be in the new campaign — which is actually a little too short — but the new “firefight” mode, which pits a team of human players against wave after wave of AI attackers. Firefight isn’t original either. It’s a copy of the “Horde” mode in Gears of War 2, but I think it’s better executed than the Gears of War version.
Unfortunately, the model appears to be flawed. In the zombie literature, opinions differ as to whether a zombie epidemic can affect those who are already dead. Although many zombie works do have zombies arising from graveyards and such, the most (faux) serious work on zombies, Max Brooks, asserts that the zombie virus affects only the living. But, in either case, the literature is unanimous that destroying the brain puts down a zombie permanently.
In contrast, the paper’s model posits that zombies can arise from the dead population, and that dead population includes not only dead from natural (non-zombie) causes, but zombies that have been put down. This is clearly wrong.
Fortunately, Brooks’s scenario can be recovered by setting to zero the parameter that dictates how quickly the dead become undead. With that parameter set to zero, it doesn’t matter that the dead population is too large. However, the more typical scenario cannot be recovered without a new model, necessitating a new solution.
Alas, the world may have to wait a little longer for a serious mathematical treatment of the zombie problem.
Democrats are considering a video game tax to fund their health care catastrophe and to discourage inactive lifestyles. It’s hard to imagine that a video game tax could bring in much money, and I’m not aware of any study that supports the hypothesis that taxing video games would result in healthier lifestyles.
Out of my gaming companions, most do not live sedentary lives. In fact, a surprising number are firefighters. On-duty firefighters need something to do while they wait around in the station for a call and video games fit the bill. I also understand that video games are popular among soliders deployed to inhospitable locations like Afghanistan and Iraq. (I generally don’t game with them, though, due to time differences and network latency.) Firefighters and soldiers would be surprised to learn of their inactive lifestyles.
This is all anecdotal, of course. But again, as far as I’m aware, these proposals are being made on mere conjecture. One would also get different anecdotes from children, I’m sure, but children are actually a small segment of the video game market:
As younger generations grow and have children of their own, more parents are playing video games than ever before – 36% of parents play video games. “Families that play together stay together” can now mean playing video games.
Eighty percent of gamer parents play video games with their kids.
Forty-seven percent of video game players are between the ages of 18 and 49. The fastest growing demographic is the 50-plus crowd. This doesn’t mean that kids aren’t playing video games anymore; far from it… they still represent 28% of all gamers out there.
More and more older Americans are playing video games than ever before. Video games are perfect activities for seniors by providing activity without physical stress. They offer health benefits with coordination, balance and endurance. 24% of Americans over age 50 played video games last year, and that number should only increase.
The average game buyer is 38 years old, five years older than the average player. This gap in age represents the scores of parents buying games for their children, and the tremendous influence parents have on sales.
Brian Doherty notices that Heinlein’s comments on the future of the auto industry in his 1956 novel The Door into Summer (one of my favorite books) seem particularly relevant today. (Via Instapundit.)
Tickets at the new taxpayer-financed Yankee Stadium are a wee bit overpriced:
Ticket prices at the new Yankee Stadium are so high that if a New Yorker wants to watch a Mariners/Yankees game from the best seats, it would be a lot cheaper to fly to Seattle, stay in a nice hotel, eat fancy dinners, and see two games.
Option 1: Two tickets to Tuesday night, June 30, Mariners at Yanks, cost for just thetickets, $5,000.
Option 2: Two round-trip airline tickets to Seattle, Friday, Aug. 14, return Sunday the 16th, rental car for three days, two-night double occupancy stay in four-star hotel, two top tickets to both the Saturday and Sunday Yanks-Mariners games, two best-restaurant-in-town dinners for two. Total cost, $2,800. Plus-frequent flyer miles.
Unfortunately, the show will show on Fox, which buried Firefly under a mountain of network incompetence. Hopefully, this one will will get a decent chance.
A rose by any other name … except when it comes to being a part of the Steelers Nation and having the word “raven” in your moniker. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has gone to great lengths to show his Steelers pride and his dislike for their rivals and upcoming playoff opponents, the Baltimore Ravens.
This morning, the Mayor changed his name from Ravenstahl to Steelerstahl, at least until after the AFC Championship match-up. . .
The Mayor changed the name on his office door, signed the official papers and has finished the name change proclamation at the City-County Building. He will keep his new name through Sunday.
Ages ago, I read a very positive review by John Podhoretz of the German film The Lives of Others, and added it to my Netflix queue. This week I finally watched it, and I thought it was outstanding.
The Lives of Others is set in East Germany in 1984. Its theme is the evil of communism, but unlike some other films, it is not about the large-scale atrocities of communism such as the purges of Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. Rather, it is about the everyday oppression that characterized life under the party’s boot.
The film tells the story of two men, Georg Dreyman, a successful playwright, and Hauptmann Wiesler, a Stasi agent. Wiesler, an instructor at the Stasi school for interrogation, is assigned to monitor Dreyman. Wiesler’s team installs bugs in Dreyman’s home and monitors them night-and-day. Wiesler, however, becomes disillusioned when he learns that the reason he is monitoring Dreyman is not to protect the socialist state, but because the minister of culture is infatuated with Dreyman’s girlfriend and wishes to remove him as a rival. Wiesler decides to try to help Dreyman by filing false surveillance reports and by interfering in his life in subtle ways (such as making him aware of the minister’s designs on his girlfriend). Unfortunately, the minister does not give up easily.
The Lives of Others is not my usual sort of fare (it has no action whatsoever), but I highly recommend it.
The Economist has a very entertaining article about the growing global popularity of chilies. I thought this fact was particularly interesting:
From this point of view, the most interesting trend is not in ever-higher doses of capsaicin [the active ingredient in hot chilies] for the maniac market, but in the presence of chili in a range of foodstuffs that previous generations would have regarded as preposterous candidates for hotting up. Chili-flavoured chocolate, for example, has gone from being a novelty item to a popular mainstream product. Mr Waters sells “hot apple chili jelly” as a condiment for meat, and chili-infused olive oil.
The reason may be that capsaicin excites the trigeminal nerve, increasing the body’s receptiveness to the flavour of other foods. That is not just good news for gourmets. It is a useful feature in poor countries where the diet might otherwise be unbearably bland and stodgy. In a study in 1992 by the CSIRO’s Sensory Research Centre, scientists looked at the effect of capsaicin on the response to solutions containing either sugar or salt. The sample was 35 people who all ate spicy food regularly but not exclusively. Even a small quantity of capsaicin increased the perceived intensity of the solutions ingested.
In school, I was taught that spicy food was invented as a form of food preservation: spices would drown out the taste of rotten food, or so the story went. Apparently, the truth is just the opposite; capsaicin actually increases the flavor of other foods.
The Communist Party of St. Petersburg seems to have decided that they are in the movie review business. Last May they bashed the latest Indiana Jones movie for promoting anti-Soviet propaganda. (The Soviets were really dedicated to peace, you see; the Soviet invasions of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan being minor aberrations.) Their latest review pans the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace, calling the fictional James Bond “a man who worked for decades under the orders of Thatcher and Reagan to destroy the USSR.”
The story gets even weirder. The group is particularly incensed with Ukrainian co-star Olga Kurylenko, but:
Her supposed betrayals will be forgiven, the group promised in its statement, if the actress delivers her co-star Craig to the Russian secret service. “Let him tell what other plans are being written in the Pentagon and Hollywood to discredit Russia and drive a wedge between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples.”
Posted by K. Crary 
