He's a Pinball Wizard, there has to be a twist

Brought to us by that French lighting company that paints buildings in light. This time, they've created a virtual pinball machine that works, and is played on the side of a building. People are actually working the flippers.

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "The Social Network"

The Rich are Just Like You and Me...Only Much Younger  
4 Out Of 5 Stars

David Fincher has a knack for seedy underbellies, and he finds a juicy one to stab in "The Social Network." Working from a wordy script from Aaron Sorkin and a bravura performance from Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg), he boils the creation of the most successful internet site down to friendship, betrayal and insecurity, with side servings of jealousy and greed. It's the same old story you've heard a million times before, just updated for the 21'st century.

Eisenberg shows the kind of detached brilliance of the uber-nerd stereotype, and he makes Zuckerberg into a believably arrogant genius. His zingers are cruelly on target, even though many of them are delivered at deserving targets. (It also is worth noting that had these things been said in an actual legal deposition, the speaker would have been escorted away.) However, you see essentially a hurt young man whose brilliance doesn't impress many folks because he is an overbearing ween. This fact is set up in the brutally dark comedic exchange at the movie's opening, where Zuckerberg is trying to score points with a girl, all the while continually berating her. One drunken revenge hacking later, and the seeds of Facebook are planted.

But it is that isolated anger that fuels "The Social Network." When the spoiled rich Winklevoss twins (played with a bit of trickery by one Armie Hammer) are trying to sue on the grounds of intellectual theft, Zuckerberg snaps at the lawyer representing them that his thoughts are "back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing." Then to drive his irritation at the attorney home, he sneers "Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"

There are snakes all over this grassy web, all trying to get to Zuckerberg's money, and at the same time, Zuckerberg stabs one of the only people to show him kindness, his co-founder (Andrew Garfield) Eduardo Saverin. It's hard to comprehend Zuckerberg's reasoning for trying to jam his one friend out of the business, although the snake oil spewed by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, who seems to be playing himself) seems a likely explanation. The way these three triangulate forms the emotional core of the film, with Parker playing demonic mischief maker, trying to grease his way into a spotlight that he envies Eduardo for having. The rapid-fire back and forth between all these spokes still centralize back on Zuckerberg, and "The Social Network" turns on how much you either believe the story or how much you can tolerate two hours of listening to these wealthy but morally bereft children spearing each other.

My Amazon Reviews: Todd Rundgren "No World Order"

Rapping and Ranting with Rundgren
3 Out of 5 Stars

In the early 90's, the ever inventive Todd Rundgren took a stab at a new technology, the Interactive Musical CD. Rechristening himself TR-I, the unique "No World Order" appeared. While the original CD-I's were playable in a now obsolete format/technology, the CD's themselves are still available - and cheap, too - for play on a standard CD player.

This is one of Todd's oddest recordings. Comprised of 10 songs that are fractured into snippets across "No World Order's" duration, the album is all Todd playing all the music. He cross-cuts bridges, lyrics and choruses from each song (plus a quick drop-in from "The Twilight Zone" and a sample pulled over from his own "A Capella"), bouncing from one theme to another. Instead of the lyrical exercise of writing lyrics, cutting them apart and reassembling them at random, Todd did the same to his musical fragments. It makes for a very interesting cycle.

There are some superb individual songs here, with Todd singing (or more often, rapping) over the synthesized beats. This also perhaps Todd's angriest album, with the scathing "Fascist Christ" mincing no words when it comes to religious fundamentalists and "World Wide Epiphany" encouraging his listeners to "send a message to the government, pack it in cement." But it wouldn't be a complete Todd album without that one soul searching ballad, and on "NWO," it's "Time Stood Still."

That is the odd song out here, with rapid-fire rants like "Day Job" setting the primary tone of the CD. Todd kept the TR-I moniker for two more releases, "The Individualist" and a remixed soft-sounding version of this album called "No World Order Lite." This original "No World Order" remains as a testament to Todd's ongoing fascination with new technologies and his constant ability to leap from style to style at will.

Introducing: The I-Pawd

Max Headroom finally headed for DVD!

"Max Headroom" starred Matt Frewer as a reporter whose mind is downloaded into a computer to create a virtual clone who exists in the digital world. Amanda Pays, Jeffrey Tambor and W. Morgan Sheppard also star in the series, which ran for 14 episodes on Cinemax and ABC in 1987 and 1988. Set in the near future, "Max Headroom" depicted a world of television run amok.

Shout! Factory has a "Max Headroom" complete-series DVD set slated for August 20, according to a spokesperson. Episodes are being transferred from their original elements to provide the best quality, and Shout! Factory is planning a robust range of extras for the set. Bonus content may include the original U.K. telefilm 20 Minutes Into the Future, upon which the series is based, though nothing has been confirmed. Max Headroom also appeared in a series of Coca-Cola commercials in the 1980s, raising speculation such content may also be fodder for bonus material, but Shout! Factory said planning the extras is in the early stage.

(From Home Media Magazine)

Would This make you want a computer?

 An early computer marketing advert

computer world!