 Reviews of all sorts of things: books, gadgets, software, etc.
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Jul
12
2005
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Tuesday, 12 July 2005 |
So what's the deal with this one? Billed as one of the Greatest Movies of All Times on IMDB (#5), it took me four days to watch it. Somehow the plot was too predictable, the scenes too repetitious, the acting unintelligible without cultural context. Didn't get it. Sorry. Maybe in a next life.
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Jul
12
2005
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Tuesday, 12 July 2005 |
I had heard about this book, "The Tipping Point", for a while and decided to give it a read. At first, I thought it was going to be something like "Built to Last" or "First, Break All the Rules": a book with a single message that could have been written as two sentences, but is fluffed up with examples and discussions. Not the case here.
A tipping point, according to the author, is a sudden change in the state of a mass of humans according to which something that was not popular just before the tipping point is popular after. The tipping point fits in the theory of the chasm, according to which there is a strong difference between the first people that adopt a technology and the next group. This book is about what kind of things help moving across the chasm and generating a tipping point.
"The Tipping Point" goes into detail about what exactly constitutes a tipping point, and how to get there. The author focuses on three elements:
- The Law of the Few - in any given environment that is subject to a tipping point, there are a select few that can make the tipping occur. There are Connectors, who have lots of people they know and thus function as spreading agents; there are Mavens, who have specialized knowledge and like to pass it on; and there are Salesmen, who are able to convince people who are doubting.
- The Stickiness Factor explains that only those changes can cause a tipping point that are inherently sticky. If something is quickly forgotten, it will disappear soon no matter how contagious it is. This is akin to the spreading of viruses: Ebola is highly contagious, but it soon kills the host and an epidemic never occurred on a global scale.
- The Power of Context asserts that even a small change in the environment can have a very strong global impact, if it works with the other two principles to pursue a change.
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Jun
26
2005
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Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
Great! So there is an underdog horse with an underdog jockey, but they win all races and power a whole generation of men and women desperately seeking a role model for overturning odds.
Seabiscuit was the star of 1938. The one that already had given up on twice, who managed to recover and achieve the greatest results when he should have been long history.
Made into a novel later on, the story of Seabiscuit the horse and of the men that made him into a star got to become an exciting movie, whose duration of two and a half hours is the only serious limitation to enjoyment.
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Jun
25
2005
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Saturday, 25 June 2005 |
The very memorable Jennifer Garner stars in this forgettable action-packed movie. Elektra is a spin-off of the recent Daredavil, starring Ben Affleck, which bombed at the box office.
Since Spiderman captured the audiences and ranked in the Top Ten Highest Grossing Movies of All Times, comic book characters have become the targets of big budget Hollywood. It worked with Superman decades ago, it worked with Spiderman - why wouldn't it work with Daredevil, too?
Elektra is an assassin by choice. Rejected by her martial arts teacher because of anger containment problems, she lives a jet set life of murder and luxury. Until she finds the one man (with child) she can't kill. It turns out that man and his child are sent by the martial arts teacher as a sort of test.
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Jun
25
2005
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Saturday, 25 June 2005 |
How on Earth could I have lived almost 38 years without ever seeing "The Life of Brian" to the end? It is a movie in its own category, even within the Monty Python group; friends had been telling me I had to watch it for a long, long time.
Now that I am through it, I have to admire the incredible finesse with which the MP crew packs a short amount of time. It is bound to be the highest concentration of satiric jokes on DVD. Some of the skits they came up with are so amazingly to the point, you can't really laugh because there is too much depth.
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