Was the Chris Nolan movie, Inception, inspired by the 2004 Donald Duck comic, Uncle Scrooge: The Dream of a Lifetime? You be the judge. (Be warned that the comic link loads very slowly even on broadband.) Damon Brown’s CNN post about this is here. My opinion? The comic is very good and could be a problem for Chris Nolan despite his claim that he worked on the Inception script for 10 years.
Back in June I commented on the fact that customers of the new Apple iPhone 4 complained about poor reception within hours of purchase and that Apple’s initial response was, “You’re holding it wrong.” Finally, after Consumer Reports gave the phone a “Not Recommended” rating, Steve Jobs came forth with his July press conference and stated that the performance issues were not to unique to Apple and that there was no “antennagate.” He went on to say that because Apple loved their customers they were going to give all who purchased an iPhone 4 between the phone’s release date and 30 September, a new $30 case which would be a better fix than the duct tape solution Consumer Reports had recommended.
So, $30 times the 8.4 million units sold since the release date equals $252 million dollar in lost additional sales. And if you’ve ever worked in retail, you know that add-on sales, which these cases were intended to be, add directly to the company’s bottom line. So it was a safe bet that if your name wasn’t Steve Jobs and you just cost your company $252 million dollars in sales, you might have a problem with job security. Well, today, the other shoe dropped for the Apple iPhone 4 or at least for the man who was in charge of the iPhone and iPod division at Apple. Mark Papermaster was fired from what had previously been one of Apple’s most successful money making divisions. The story of Mr. Papermaster’s hiring and firing is here. I don’t think Mr. Jobs attended Mr. Papermaster’s farewell party.
Comic-Con has been a staple of San Diego county summers for 40 years. It is, in fact, become so large an entity that other larger venues are wooing the convention and the consensus is that Comic-Con’s days at the San Diego Convention Center are numbered.
Oddly enough, I have never found the time to make it to this 4-day event and on the occasions when I’ve decided to go, the event was sold out. But because I have a friend who goes religiously every year, this year I got a goody bag.
In addition to the 2010 souvenir book, I got Brightest Day (issue #0) and a beautiful tee-shirt for the upcoming Jon Favreau directed movie, “Cowboys and Aliens,” which I am not showing here until September.
Sadly, because there are so many creepy people in the world, I don’t want to name my friend, but I have directed her to this post and I want to say publicly and loudly, “Thank you so much!! These gifts made my year!”
While channel surfing this evening I came across the latest incarnation of this classic, cross-generational cartoon on Cartoon Network. And I admit that I was surprised and very pleased by this latest version.
Probably, the biggest surprise concerning this 40 year old franchise is Velma. First off, Velma looks like she lost about 20 pounds and secondly, she and Shaggy are a couple. (Shaggy wants to keep this a secret from Scooby which irritates Velma to no end.)
The “meddling kids” in this version are in high school and live with their parents. Their home town, Crystal Cove, is the home of monster sightings and has built its tourism trade upon that fact. The gang still investigates sightings and attempts to expose the fakes, all to the dismay of the local sheriff.
As someone who has watched all of the resurrections of this series, to include the ones with Scrappy-Doo, this version is a delight. The voice acting is grand to include Mindy Cohn (The Facts of Life) as Velma and Matthew Lillard as Shaggy (Shaggy in the live action movies). But what makes this show a winner is that the story is about the group dynamics of the people trying to hook up and discover who they are and not solely about Shaggy and his dog as comedy relief. It means for the first time in more than 25 years I can actually watch an episode from beginning to end. It means I liked what I saw and hope for more of the same.
Apparently, the latest fad this week is to mash-up the trailer from the Chris Nolan movie, “Inception,” and mix it with other movies. So far, I’ve seen a couple of really good ones and and some that frankly aren’t so good.
I offer you what I think are the best three so far…this week. They are Bill & Ted Excellent Inception, Up and my favorite, Dora the Explorer.
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