The Latin funk orchestra Grupo Fantasma runescape accounts might just be one of the least-known acts up for a Grammy this weekend, although it's a second-time nominee.
But their famous collaborators, from Prince to indie rockers Spoon to pioneering salsa pianist Larry Harlow, know their work well.
After 10 years of steady touring and recording, the fiercely independent, Austin, Texas-based band has won a following among discerning Latin music fans for their funky take on older music styles such as cumbia, salsa and norteno.
Grupo Fantasma's 2008 album, "Sonidos Gold," featured guest spots by Harlow and saxophonist Maceo Parker, best known as James Brown's favorite horn player. The album created a buzz and garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Rock, Alternative or Urban Album.
For last year's follow-up, "El Existential," the band rented a tiny house, transformed it into a ramshackle recording studio and spent a few months experimenting with new sounds and homemade instruments. Harlow again plays on a song, as does the Meat Puppets' Kurt Kirkwood.
When "El Existential" garnered the band a second Grammy nomination for the same runescape gold category, it came as a surprise, said guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada, 33, who spoke while on a tour of the Southwest that led up to Sunday's Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
The 11-piece band, which has sold about three-quarters of its records at its shows, takes nothing for granted, he said.
"We've never been trendy," said Quesada, a University of Texas at Austin graduate who began his professional life as a graphic designer. "When we first started we had not planned it out beyond playing gigs, getting drunk and making a little money, and then doing it again next weekend. But what we ended up creating was something new and special, and we could not really imagine that 10 years down the runescape money road we'd have this success."
Cathy Ragland, an ethnomusicologist at University of Texas Pan American and an expert on border music, said she hears various influences in the band's pan-Latin sound, from cumbia mixed with deep funk to salsa with a reggae bass drop. She includes Grupo Fantasma in a wave of border bands with U.S. born players, including non-Latinos, who have been influenced by Mexican cumbia DJs in clubs frequented by immigrants.
Quesada didn't imagine as a kid growing up in Laredo, Texas, that he would make a career out of playing Latin music set to mostly Spanish lyrics, though like most of the band members he grew up near the border, had family in Mexico and was surrounded by Mexican music. Traditional Latin music was for his grandparents, he thought, but things changed when he got to college.
That's when he began listening to Colombian cumbia big bands on the Discos Fuentes label, Fania Records salsa stars like Harlow and Willie Colon, and Latin rocker Carlos Santana, as well as '70s funk.
Grupo Fantasma formed out of two college bands and, with a base in the musical hotbed buy ffxiv gil of Austin, began playing the city's massive South by Southwest festival and public television's Austin City Limits.
With a sound that defied category and a growing number of members who needed to make a living, the band knew it was taking a risk by ignoring interest from major labels and industry types who tried to steer them in a more commercial direction.
"Everyone said what we're doing was wrong, we needed to do this or that, to make ourselves more contemporary, to add hip-hop or whatever, but we stuck to what we were doing and in the long run it paid off, though there were times we thought it might not," Quesada said.
A fellow Austin band, Spoon, helped by putting the band's horn section on its 2007 album "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga."
A big break came when Prince invited the band to play with him at his now defunct Las Vegas club, where Grupo Fantasma became a fixture, and at parties after the runescape money Golden Globes and the Super Bowl. When Prince appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," he brought Grupo Fantasma players to back him up.
Grupo Fantasma has self-produced all four of its studio albums, working with labels only to get help with distribution. The band funded "El Existential" entirely on its own but decided to sign a distribution deal with Nat Geo Music, the National Geographic Society's new world music label. The Grammy nomination is the label's first.
After a decade of working almost nonstop, Quesada isn't showing any signs of slowing down. His next release will be the first from a new project called The Echocentrics, due out this spring on Thievery Corporation's label, Eighteenth Street Music. Vocals will be sung in English, Spanish and Portuguese by Tita Lima of Brazil and Natalia Clavier of Argentina.
That will be followed by the fourth album by Ocote Soul Sounds, a collaboration of Quesada and Martin Perna, founder of Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra.
Later this year, Grupo's mostly instrumental alter ego, Brownout, whose lineup is drawn from the larger band, will release its third album. Brownout's debut album, Homenaje, earned acclaim both in the U.S. and in U.K., and the bands have toured Europe.
"We like to try different things and it's good for us musically," Quesada said. "It keeps us from getting ffxiv power leveling burnt out playing the same music all the time."
2011年2月14日星期一
2011年2月13日星期日
Box office preview: Audiences to 'Just Go With It'
Since 1995's "Billy Madison," Adam runescape gold Sandler has been as consistent a box office draw as any star working today. This weekend's debut of Sony Pictures' "Just Go With It" will continue that trend with an expected $30 million in North American ticket sales.
And beyond the traditional weekend, the film will also see a solid Monday gross with Valentine's couples making a romantic date with Sandler and co-star Jennifer Aniston.
Beyond that, let's just say that 11 Sandler films have earned over $100 million at the domestic box office and that his lifetime domestic revenue total is over $2 billion.
Three other wide-release openers will round out the top four slots this weekend with runescape money a rare G-rated 3-D match up of Disney's animated "Gnomeo and Juliet" and Paramount's music documentary "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," both likely to post solid debuts in the mid to high teens and even perhaps sneak into the low $20 million range.
"Gnomeo" will benefit from a dearth of family fare in the marketplace that has propelled Disney's "Tangled" and Warner Bros.' "Yogi Bear" to better-than-expected revenue totals. And Bieber fever will be in full swing, with teen girls proving once again they can be a powerful force at the box office runescape accounts as they come out to support their music idol and probably make him a movie star.
In a weekend filled with newcomers, "The Eagle" from Focus Features will land in just over 2,000 theatres and a projected gross in the $8 million to $10 million range. The period adventure set in Roman-ruled Britain stars "Dear John's" Channing Tatum and will draw fans of epics such as "Gladiator," "300" and "Clash of the Titans."
Completing the top five lineup will be last week's No. 1 film, Sony-Screen Gems' "The Roommate," which will bank somewhere between $6 million and $8 million for the Valentine's weekend. Yet another profit-maker for Screen Gems, the film earned back its production budget in its first three days of release and looks to gather a total domestic gross of over $20 million by buy ffxiv gil Sunday night.
And beyond the traditional weekend, the film will also see a solid Monday gross with Valentine's couples making a romantic date with Sandler and co-star Jennifer Aniston.
Beyond that, let's just say that 11 Sandler films have earned over $100 million at the domestic box office and that his lifetime domestic revenue total is over $2 billion.
Three other wide-release openers will round out the top four slots this weekend with runescape money a rare G-rated 3-D match up of Disney's animated "Gnomeo and Juliet" and Paramount's music documentary "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," both likely to post solid debuts in the mid to high teens and even perhaps sneak into the low $20 million range.
"Gnomeo" will benefit from a dearth of family fare in the marketplace that has propelled Disney's "Tangled" and Warner Bros.' "Yogi Bear" to better-than-expected revenue totals. And Bieber fever will be in full swing, with teen girls proving once again they can be a powerful force at the box office runescape accounts as they come out to support their music idol and probably make him a movie star.
In a weekend filled with newcomers, "The Eagle" from Focus Features will land in just over 2,000 theatres and a projected gross in the $8 million to $10 million range. The period adventure set in Roman-ruled Britain stars "Dear John's" Channing Tatum and will draw fans of epics such as "Gladiator," "300" and "Clash of the Titans."
Completing the top five lineup will be last week's No. 1 film, Sony-Screen Gems' "The Roommate," which will bank somewhere between $6 million and $8 million for the Valentine's weekend. Yet another profit-maker for Screen Gems, the film earned back its production budget in its first three days of release and looks to gather a total domestic gross of over $20 million by buy ffxiv gil Sunday night.
2011年2月11日星期五
Lady Gaga sets high bar for 'Born This Way'
At the MTV Video Music Awards in runescape gold September 2010, Lady Gaga owned the night. Her music video for "Bad Romance" scooped up several awards including video of the year and Gaga also claimed a moonman for collaborating with Beyonce on "Telephone," reported Entertainment Weekly. Because of her amazing success that night and her love for her fans or "Little Monsters," Lady Gaga decided to treat viewers to a few acapella lines of her next single, "Born This Way."
Since this first announcement containing both the lead single from her new album and the title track, Lady Gaga has issued several other tweets and facebook messages concerning "Born This Way." The success or failure of of the single compared to Gaga's track record will determine if this saturation of information prior to runescape money release was a brilliant social media strategy or extreme overkill for all but the most devout of "Monsters."
Brag This Way
As noted above, "Born This Way" was first introduced as Gaga's next single at the VMAs. After this initial public offering, Gaga has mentioned the song or answered questions about it and her next album on multiple occasions. As one might expect from a performer with the natural ability and confidence of Lady Gaga, she has repeatedly established a very high bar for the album. MTV reported Gaga as stating "the album is the absolute greatest work I have ever done," and that the album will consist of "a lot of hit records that will piss people off." Considering the massive success previous Gaga releases "The Fame" and "The Fame Monster" received, it runescape accounts will take more than a meat dress to back up those words.
Tweet This Way
As a New Year's gift to her Monsters, Lady Gaga tweeted a bare-bottomed picture of herself wearing a jacket with the words "Born This Way" across the back. In this tweet Gaga stated the official single release date of February 13, 2011 and an album release date of May 23, 2011. Because of previous hype, one could have presumed that Gaga would now be mum on "Born This Way" until February 13th, but she was not. On January 27th, 2011, Lady Gaga used the TwitLonger service to link the full lyrics of "Born This Way" to her fans.
At first glance, the lyrics to "Born This Way" seem like a slightly more blunt version of any song telling people to be themselves despite what others think. Based on this and the bit of overkill that has already went in to promoting the song, "Born This Way" is going to need a bumping dance beat and exceedingly catchy phraseology to become the "sing-with-Gaga" sensations buy ffxiv gil that "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance" were.
Since this first announcement containing both the lead single from her new album and the title track, Lady Gaga has issued several other tweets and facebook messages concerning "Born This Way." The success or failure of of the single compared to Gaga's track record will determine if this saturation of information prior to runescape money release was a brilliant social media strategy or extreme overkill for all but the most devout of "Monsters."
Brag This Way
As noted above, "Born This Way" was first introduced as Gaga's next single at the VMAs. After this initial public offering, Gaga has mentioned the song or answered questions about it and her next album on multiple occasions. As one might expect from a performer with the natural ability and confidence of Lady Gaga, she has repeatedly established a very high bar for the album. MTV reported Gaga as stating "the album is the absolute greatest work I have ever done," and that the album will consist of "a lot of hit records that will piss people off." Considering the massive success previous Gaga releases "The Fame" and "The Fame Monster" received, it runescape accounts will take more than a meat dress to back up those words.
Tweet This Way
As a New Year's gift to her Monsters, Lady Gaga tweeted a bare-bottomed picture of herself wearing a jacket with the words "Born This Way" across the back. In this tweet Gaga stated the official single release date of February 13, 2011 and an album release date of May 23, 2011. Because of previous hype, one could have presumed that Gaga would now be mum on "Born This Way" until February 13th, but she was not. On January 27th, 2011, Lady Gaga used the TwitLonger service to link the full lyrics of "Born This Way" to her fans.
At first glance, the lyrics to "Born This Way" seem like a slightly more blunt version of any song telling people to be themselves despite what others think. Based on this and the bit of overkill that has already went in to promoting the song, "Born This Way" is going to need a bumping dance beat and exceedingly catchy phraseology to become the "sing-with-Gaga" sensations buy ffxiv gil that "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance" were.
2011年2月10日星期四
Popularity increases aggression in kids
Previous studies showed that aggression runescape gold makes kids more popular, but a new study suggests that becoming more popular makes kids more aggressive.
To determine the link between popularity and aggression, researchers at the University of California, Davis examined surveys involving about 3,700 students. The surveys asked the students about their friendships as well as whom they picked on and who picked on them. The surveys' questions concerned both physical aggression and relationship aggression such as name- calling and ostracism.
After controlling for variables known to influence aggression, including dating activity, sports participation, grade-point average, socioeconomic status and physical development, the researchers found that students who were more central in their social networks were also more aggressive.
Network centrality is a bit more complex than popularity: It means that a kid has not only runescape money a lot of friends, but a lot of friends who are also socially prominent. These school-age movers and shakers have a lot of social power among their peers, lead researcher Bob Faris said in remarks published by LiveScience.com on Tuesday.
"For the most part, we find that status increases aggression," Faris told LiveScience.
"For some people, that will be a surprise. For other people who have grown up quoting 'Mean Girls,' it might be an 'Oh, duh' kind of revelation," he added, referring to the 2004 comedy about a clique of vicious but popular high school girls.
In the study, Faris and his colleagues not only examined individual traits, but also social networks where bullying takes place, using data from a long-term study of runescape accounts public school children in three counties in North Carolina, according to LiveScience.com.
Their approach is different from many previous studies on kid aggression which only focused on the traits of bullies and their victims. These studies suggested that bullies often have troubled family lives and may be at higher risk for depression and other mental health disorders. Their victims are often unpopular.
The gradual increase of aggression with popularity continues until one reaches the top two percent of popular students, Faris said. At that point, aggression suddenly drops off. The top two percent are even less aggressive than the kids at the very bottom of the heap, Faris said.
"We can't preclude the possibility that kids at the very top are just somehow really different, that they're incredibly nice and everybody loves them," Faris said. But other evidence suggests that these extremely popular kids are just secure enough in their positions that they don't need to be aggressive buy ffxiv gil anymore, he said.
To determine the link between popularity and aggression, researchers at the University of California, Davis examined surveys involving about 3,700 students. The surveys asked the students about their friendships as well as whom they picked on and who picked on them. The surveys' questions concerned both physical aggression and relationship aggression such as name- calling and ostracism.
After controlling for variables known to influence aggression, including dating activity, sports participation, grade-point average, socioeconomic status and physical development, the researchers found that students who were more central in their social networks were also more aggressive.
Network centrality is a bit more complex than popularity: It means that a kid has not only runescape money a lot of friends, but a lot of friends who are also socially prominent. These school-age movers and shakers have a lot of social power among their peers, lead researcher Bob Faris said in remarks published by LiveScience.com on Tuesday.
"For the most part, we find that status increases aggression," Faris told LiveScience.
"For some people, that will be a surprise. For other people who have grown up quoting 'Mean Girls,' it might be an 'Oh, duh' kind of revelation," he added, referring to the 2004 comedy about a clique of vicious but popular high school girls.
In the study, Faris and his colleagues not only examined individual traits, but also social networks where bullying takes place, using data from a long-term study of runescape accounts public school children in three counties in North Carolina, according to LiveScience.com.
Their approach is different from many previous studies on kid aggression which only focused on the traits of bullies and their victims. These studies suggested that bullies often have troubled family lives and may be at higher risk for depression and other mental health disorders. Their victims are often unpopular.
The gradual increase of aggression with popularity continues until one reaches the top two percent of popular students, Faris said. At that point, aggression suddenly drops off. The top two percent are even less aggressive than the kids at the very bottom of the heap, Faris said.
"We can't preclude the possibility that kids at the very top are just somehow really different, that they're incredibly nice and everybody loves them," Faris said. But other evidence suggests that these extremely popular kids are just secure enough in their positions that they don't need to be aggressive buy ffxiv gil anymore, he said.
2011年2月9日星期三
Geek Culture Will Never Die...or Be Popular
I'm going to let you in on a runescape gold secret. There is no thin line between geek culture and pop culture. There's a big, thick wall between the two. Every so often, someone fires a harpoon through that wall. A comic book movie becomes popular, or a video game makes waves in the media, or a Web site becomes the newest craze, and the harpoon hooked onto a nice chunk of geek culture and pulls it through to the pop culture side.
Then the wall is spackled over and the geek culture on the pop culture side is eaten up and forgotten about. Then, ironically, the wall is covered with posters like ads for G4's Attack of the Show, proclaiming oxymoronically "pop culture geeks unite!" and announcements from CNN that geek culture is now a big part of pop culture.
No matter how hard media outlets try to make the concept catch on, no matter how many studios try to capitalize on the cultural waves of comic book movies and million-selling video games, there is no such thing as pop culture geekdom. There is only the small amount of bleed-through that happens when that harpoon punches through the wall.
Last December, comedian Patton Oswalt wrote in Wired a treatise on the decay and necessary death of geek culture. He wrote that geek culture has become diluted, co-opted, and bastardized, and that if it wants to flourish again as a sub-culture, it needs to die and come back.
I sympathize with him, but I also completely disagree. Geek culture isn't dead. It's just hidden behind that huge wall.
Geek culture is defined by both depth and obscurity of the subject. Do you play D&D? You're starting at being a geek. Do you have a bookshelf full of D20 system manuals? You're a pretty solid runescape money geek. Do you play Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia on top of D&D? Now we're reaching some really respectable geek levels. Meanwhile, all any non-geeks know about role-playing games is D&D. For some, it's the stereotypical impression of the pastime. For others, it's the gateway activity that leads to deeper, stranger, geekier activities. We're not in danger (or hope) of the non-geek masses suddenly cracking jokes about ultraviolent clearance and serving The Computer. Nor do I really expect anyone reading this to get that reference.
Role-playing games aren't exactly accessible to many, so let's look at comic book movies, a sub-genre of film that has experienced a surprising resurgence over the last few years, even when the comic book industry itself has been shaky. Everyone saw Iron Man and 300. Many people saw V for Vendetta. Plenty of people saw Watchmen. Not nearly enough people saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Of all those people, how many do you think even realize that 300 and V for Vendetta are based on comic books? Or that Batman Begins is based partly on Frank Miller (300)'s Batman: Year One? How many readers went on to explore the works of Neil Gaiman, or Warren Ellis, or Garth Ennis?
Going the slightest bit beyond the direct source materials of these movies, mass interest in comics drops like a stone. Viewers of V for Vendetta and Watchmen didn't exactly clamor to read all the Alan Moore material they could find, based on the movies. For the vast majority, V for Vendetta and runescape accounts Watchmen, both seminal graphic novels and literary works of the 80s, started and stopped at the silver screen. Few, if any, searched for Moore's other work, like Swamp Thing, or Tom Strong, or Top Ten, or (god forbid) The Lost Girls. Granted, it didn't help that Moore distanced himself from all cinematic adaptations of his work (and after League of Extraordinary Gentleman, no one on the planet can blame him), but it probably wouldn't have changed the fleeting interest in the material, and not the source and context of the material. Like Dungeons & Dragons, these popular comic book movies are a flicker of geek culture across the face of popular culture, like a light shining briefly through a hole in a wall.
Even video games, now a huge part of popular entertainment, are not immune from the massive barrier between geek culture and pop culture. When most people think about video games, they think about a handful of big names, either new and super-popular series like Call of Duty, Madden, and Halo, or decades-old and archetypical properties like Mario and Sonic. Most gaming publications make a distinction between "casual gamers" (fans of easily accessible, readily available games like Bejeweled and Farmville) and "hardcore gamers," (fans of games that actually come on discs and cost $60 a pop), but they ignore the distinction between "hardcore gamers" and "bro gamers."
Bro gamers aren't geeks, because their knowledge of video games start and end at Madden and Halo. There is little interest for old-school games, retro games, imported games, or even just genre games. Bro gamers (the video game equivalent of "pop culture geeks" ignore 90% of the shelves at Gamestop or the listings on Amazon but get wicked stoked at the newest Grand Theft Auto. Few of them have tried Saint's Row 2, never mind different-genre games like Dead Space, Fallout: New Vegas, or Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Fortunately, video games have become so popular as an industry that it's one of the few cases where ff14 gil even obscure titles have gained legitimacy and some form of "post-geek" status. Comic book and role-playing game stores retain the stigma of geek, but Gamestop is a corner-store brand now, thanks to video games' growth into a multi-billion-dollar industry. Of course, if you start talking about how much you love the latest SMT game or whinge about how Mother 3 won't come to the US, you'll still probably get reactions similar to the face a dog makes when you show him a card trick.
Finally, let's look at the PC in PCMag.com: computers. It's arguably the biggest case of the "un-geeking" or a subject, and yet it perfectly shows how it remains the case. Computer use has grown from a niche activity among math nerds and engineers into something everyone does as a simple aspect of modern life. However, even computer use is only embraced on the surface for the vast majority of people. These days anyone can get online, chat with friends, Tweet, use Facebook, and perform many other activities on their computers. How many of those people could tell you what the different components are if they cracked open the cases of those computers? How many could replace their CPU, or graphics card, or even build a new computer from scratch? Of those, how many go to the extra trouble of setting up bay busses, water blocks, SLI graphics card setups, and CPU overclocking? Everyone knows how ffxiv gil to use a computer on a basic level, but only a few out of every hundred or thousand really understand its inner workings,
or care to learn. And there is the line between a computer user and a geek, just as thick and obvious as the line between a pop culture fan and a geek.
Geek culture requires not just enthusiasm, but depth and scope. Those latter two characteristics are why geekdom will never be truly co-opted by popular culture. Every media, every activity, ever genre and sub-genre and sub-sub-genre has so much variety and depth that you just can't cover it in a news report, or a water-cooler chat, or even a two-hour show on G4. You can scrape off the shiniest bits and pretend they represent the entire thing, but in the end, you're still just getting a tiny speck of what geek culture is. As long as there are small stores, small presses, and boundless enthusiasm for the most specific things, geek culture will remain both safe and alienating.
On the bright side, we have the Internet now, so even if your local friends don't care about your hobbies of collecting Generation One Transformers or the works of Takashi Miike, you can safely assume that there are at least half a dozen message boards and Web sites populated with thousands of fans. And those people, my buy ffxiv gil friends, are true geeks. And yes, I am one of them.
Then the wall is spackled over and the geek culture on the pop culture side is eaten up and forgotten about. Then, ironically, the wall is covered with posters like ads for G4's Attack of the Show, proclaiming oxymoronically "pop culture geeks unite!" and announcements from CNN that geek culture is now a big part of pop culture.
No matter how hard media outlets try to make the concept catch on, no matter how many studios try to capitalize on the cultural waves of comic book movies and million-selling video games, there is no such thing as pop culture geekdom. There is only the small amount of bleed-through that happens when that harpoon punches through the wall.
Last December, comedian Patton Oswalt wrote in Wired a treatise on the decay and necessary death of geek culture. He wrote that geek culture has become diluted, co-opted, and bastardized, and that if it wants to flourish again as a sub-culture, it needs to die and come back.
I sympathize with him, but I also completely disagree. Geek culture isn't dead. It's just hidden behind that huge wall.
Geek culture is defined by both depth and obscurity of the subject. Do you play D&D? You're starting at being a geek. Do you have a bookshelf full of D20 system manuals? You're a pretty solid runescape money geek. Do you play Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia on top of D&D? Now we're reaching some really respectable geek levels. Meanwhile, all any non-geeks know about role-playing games is D&D. For some, it's the stereotypical impression of the pastime. For others, it's the gateway activity that leads to deeper, stranger, geekier activities. We're not in danger (or hope) of the non-geek masses suddenly cracking jokes about ultraviolent clearance and serving The Computer. Nor do I really expect anyone reading this to get that reference.
Role-playing games aren't exactly accessible to many, so let's look at comic book movies, a sub-genre of film that has experienced a surprising resurgence over the last few years, even when the comic book industry itself has been shaky. Everyone saw Iron Man and 300. Many people saw V for Vendetta. Plenty of people saw Watchmen. Not nearly enough people saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Of all those people, how many do you think even realize that 300 and V for Vendetta are based on comic books? Or that Batman Begins is based partly on Frank Miller (300)'s Batman: Year One? How many readers went on to explore the works of Neil Gaiman, or Warren Ellis, or Garth Ennis?
Going the slightest bit beyond the direct source materials of these movies, mass interest in comics drops like a stone. Viewers of V for Vendetta and Watchmen didn't exactly clamor to read all the Alan Moore material they could find, based on the movies. For the vast majority, V for Vendetta and runescape accounts Watchmen, both seminal graphic novels and literary works of the 80s, started and stopped at the silver screen. Few, if any, searched for Moore's other work, like Swamp Thing, or Tom Strong, or Top Ten, or (god forbid) The Lost Girls. Granted, it didn't help that Moore distanced himself from all cinematic adaptations of his work (and after League of Extraordinary Gentleman, no one on the planet can blame him), but it probably wouldn't have changed the fleeting interest in the material, and not the source and context of the material. Like Dungeons & Dragons, these popular comic book movies are a flicker of geek culture across the face of popular culture, like a light shining briefly through a hole in a wall.
Even video games, now a huge part of popular entertainment, are not immune from the massive barrier between geek culture and pop culture. When most people think about video games, they think about a handful of big names, either new and super-popular series like Call of Duty, Madden, and Halo, or decades-old and archetypical properties like Mario and Sonic. Most gaming publications make a distinction between "casual gamers" (fans of easily accessible, readily available games like Bejeweled and Farmville) and "hardcore gamers," (fans of games that actually come on discs and cost $60 a pop), but they ignore the distinction between "hardcore gamers" and "bro gamers."
Bro gamers aren't geeks, because their knowledge of video games start and end at Madden and Halo. There is little interest for old-school games, retro games, imported games, or even just genre games. Bro gamers (the video game equivalent of "pop culture geeks" ignore 90% of the shelves at Gamestop or the listings on Amazon but get wicked stoked at the newest Grand Theft Auto. Few of them have tried Saint's Row 2, never mind different-genre games like Dead Space, Fallout: New Vegas, or Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Fortunately, video games have become so popular as an industry that it's one of the few cases where ff14 gil even obscure titles have gained legitimacy and some form of "post-geek" status. Comic book and role-playing game stores retain the stigma of geek, but Gamestop is a corner-store brand now, thanks to video games' growth into a multi-billion-dollar industry. Of course, if you start talking about how much you love the latest SMT game or whinge about how Mother 3 won't come to the US, you'll still probably get reactions similar to the face a dog makes when you show him a card trick.
Finally, let's look at the PC in PCMag.com: computers. It's arguably the biggest case of the "un-geeking" or a subject, and yet it perfectly shows how it remains the case. Computer use has grown from a niche activity among math nerds and engineers into something everyone does as a simple aspect of modern life. However, even computer use is only embraced on the surface for the vast majority of people. These days anyone can get online, chat with friends, Tweet, use Facebook, and perform many other activities on their computers. How many of those people could tell you what the different components are if they cracked open the cases of those computers? How many could replace their CPU, or graphics card, or even build a new computer from scratch? Of those, how many go to the extra trouble of setting up bay busses, water blocks, SLI graphics card setups, and CPU overclocking? Everyone knows how ffxiv gil to use a computer on a basic level, but only a few out of every hundred or thousand really understand its inner workings,
or care to learn. And there is the line between a computer user and a geek, just as thick and obvious as the line between a pop culture fan and a geek.
Geek culture requires not just enthusiasm, but depth and scope. Those latter two characteristics are why geekdom will never be truly co-opted by popular culture. Every media, every activity, ever genre and sub-genre and sub-sub-genre has so much variety and depth that you just can't cover it in a news report, or a water-cooler chat, or even a two-hour show on G4. You can scrape off the shiniest bits and pretend they represent the entire thing, but in the end, you're still just getting a tiny speck of what geek culture is. As long as there are small stores, small presses, and boundless enthusiasm for the most specific things, geek culture will remain both safe and alienating.
On the bright side, we have the Internet now, so even if your local friends don't care about your hobbies of collecting Generation One Transformers or the works of Takashi Miike, you can safely assume that there are at least half a dozen message boards and Web sites populated with thousands of fans. And those people, my buy ffxiv gil friends, are true geeks. And yes, I am one of them.
2011年2月8日星期二
'Roommate' earns top box-office bunk with $15.6M
The college thriller "The Roommate" has runescape accounts moved into the top spot at the box office with a $15.6 million debut during a typically slow Super Bowl weekend in which the NFL championship game preoccupies movie fans.
The Sony release features Leighton Meester as a psycho freshman who becomes obsessed with her new roomie (Minka Kelly).
The 3-D underwater cave adventure "Sanctum," whose producers include "Avatar" creator James Cameron, drew modest crowds and came in second with $9.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Released by Universal, "Sanctum" is a survival story about explorers trapped underground in flooded caves during a monster storm.
The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Anthony Hopkins' exorcism thriller "The Rite," fell steeply to sixth-place with $5.6 million. The Warner Bros. release raised its 10-day total to $23.7 million.
Revenue estimates were off sharply on Sunday as football fans gave movies a pass in favor of the big game. Even without the Super Bowl, though, it was another sleepy weekend at theaters, with overall business runescape gold down for the 13th-straight weekend compared to last year, when Cameron's 3-D sensation "Avatar" still was riding high.
"I think Hollywood would be crying right now were it not for the `Avatar' excuse. It really was an anomaly how well that film was doing in January and February last year," said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
This weekend's receipts came in at $86 million, down 25 percent from the same weekend in 2010, according to Hollywood.com. A year ago, the weekend was led by "Dear John" in first-place with $30.5 million and "Avatar" in second with $22.9 million, a huge number for a film that runescape money already had been in theaters for nearly two months.
More in Entertainment
The New Royals: Insight on Prince William & Kate Middleton's wedding
Full coverage of the royal wedding on Yahoo! News
Complete entertainment coverageLargely because of "Avatar," overall revenues so far this year are running 24 percent behind 2010's.
Still, Sony was happy with the results for "The Roommate," which nearly earned back its $16 million production budget over opening weekend.
Though trashed by critics, the movie gave room for a showy performance from "Gossip Girl" co-star Meester as the wacko roommate.
"She really goes for it," said Rory Bruer, Sony's head of distribution. "Crazy and ff14 gil beautiful. It kind of works for her."
"Sanctum" brought in spare change compared to the billions of "Avatar," though its opening weekend went a long way toward recouping the $12 million that Universal and partner Relativity Media paid for its distribution rights.
And the studio was happy to be in business with Cameron, a pioneer in digital 3-D production.
"Anybody working with this man, you have to revel in the opportunity," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.
While Hollywood is off to a slow start in 2011, the industry still could have a record year for revenue once a huge lineup of late-spring and summer blockbusters arrive, Dergarabedian said.
Last year was front-loaded with "Avatar," but business slowed through much of the summer and fall.
"The long shadow of `Avatar' will start diminishing pretty soon," Dergarabedian said.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
Starbucks sees higher 2011 coffee costs buy ffxiv gil but won't raise.
The Sony release features Leighton Meester as a psycho freshman who becomes obsessed with her new roomie (Minka Kelly).
The 3-D underwater cave adventure "Sanctum," whose producers include "Avatar" creator James Cameron, drew modest crowds and came in second with $9.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Released by Universal, "Sanctum" is a survival story about explorers trapped underground in flooded caves during a monster storm.
The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Anthony Hopkins' exorcism thriller "The Rite," fell steeply to sixth-place with $5.6 million. The Warner Bros. release raised its 10-day total to $23.7 million.
Revenue estimates were off sharply on Sunday as football fans gave movies a pass in favor of the big game. Even without the Super Bowl, though, it was another sleepy weekend at theaters, with overall business runescape gold down for the 13th-straight weekend compared to last year, when Cameron's 3-D sensation "Avatar" still was riding high.
"I think Hollywood would be crying right now were it not for the `Avatar' excuse. It really was an anomaly how well that film was doing in January and February last year," said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
This weekend's receipts came in at $86 million, down 25 percent from the same weekend in 2010, according to Hollywood.com. A year ago, the weekend was led by "Dear John" in first-place with $30.5 million and "Avatar" in second with $22.9 million, a huge number for a film that runescape money already had been in theaters for nearly two months.
More in Entertainment
The New Royals: Insight on Prince William & Kate Middleton's wedding
Full coverage of the royal wedding on Yahoo! News
Complete entertainment coverageLargely because of "Avatar," overall revenues so far this year are running 24 percent behind 2010's.
Still, Sony was happy with the results for "The Roommate," which nearly earned back its $16 million production budget over opening weekend.
Though trashed by critics, the movie gave room for a showy performance from "Gossip Girl" co-star Meester as the wacko roommate.
"She really goes for it," said Rory Bruer, Sony's head of distribution. "Crazy and ff14 gil beautiful. It kind of works for her."
"Sanctum" brought in spare change compared to the billions of "Avatar," though its opening weekend went a long way toward recouping the $12 million that Universal and partner Relativity Media paid for its distribution rights.
And the studio was happy to be in business with Cameron, a pioneer in digital 3-D production.
"Anybody working with this man, you have to revel in the opportunity," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.
While Hollywood is off to a slow start in 2011, the industry still could have a record year for revenue once a huge lineup of late-spring and summer blockbusters arrive, Dergarabedian said.
Last year was front-loaded with "Avatar," but business slowed through much of the summer and fall.
"The long shadow of `Avatar' will start diminishing pretty soon," Dergarabedian said.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
Starbucks sees higher 2011 coffee costs buy ffxiv gil but won't raise.
2011年2月7日星期一
Cruz, Bardem baby boy 'doing great
Oscar-winning Spanish film stars runescape gold Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have had their first child, a healthy baby boy, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
"Penelope and Javier welcomed their first son into their family last week. Both parents and baby are doing great," said the spokeswoman for Cruz, confirming Spanish press reports.
Cruz gave birth at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills on Saturday, according to the latest edition of the Spanish celebrity magazine Hola!
It published pictures of a beaming Bardem and family members of Cruz at the center, the hospital of choice for Hollywood stars. But it gave no details on the boy's name or his birth weight.
Spokespeople for Cruz and Bardem had so far refused to comment on the Spanish press reports since they emerged Tuesday.
The birth came just three days before Bardem received his third Academy Award nomination, for runescape money his performance in the film "Biutiful" by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Cruz, 36, and Bardem, 41, met when they starred opposite each other as lusty teens in the Spanish film "Jamon, Jamon," back in 1992.
In 2008, they were back together on the silver screen in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," for which Cruz won an Academy Award as best supporting actress.
The couple married in July last year at a ceremony in the Bahamas.
Bardem, also nominated for an Oscar in "Before Night Falls" (2000), won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in "No Country for Old Men."
Spain's leading daily, El Pais, quoted runescape accounts a family source as saying "the couple want to have as much privacy as possible."
"Friends of Bardem began to suspect (the baby was born) when the actor did not respond to any calls to congratulate him on his (Oscar) nomination," it added.
Bardem changed his work schedule to be at his wife's side for the birth, the paper said.
Hola! said Cruz's mother, Encarna, sister Monica -- also an actress -- and her brother Eduardo were at Cedars-Sinai for the birth.
Bardem's mother, well-known Spanish actress Pilar Bardem, traveled from Madrid on Monday to meet her grandson, according to the magazine.
The actors had kept their romance quiet for years, but Bardem got personal when he won a best actor award at the Cannes film festival in May for his role in "Biutiful."
"I share the joy of this prize with my friend, my companion, my love, Penelope Cruz," Bardem said at the time.
"I owe you so much, and I love you very much," he added, drawing tears from Cruz, a longtime muse of buy ffxiv gil Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
"Penelope and Javier welcomed their first son into their family last week. Both parents and baby are doing great," said the spokeswoman for Cruz, confirming Spanish press reports.
Cruz gave birth at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills on Saturday, according to the latest edition of the Spanish celebrity magazine Hola!
It published pictures of a beaming Bardem and family members of Cruz at the center, the hospital of choice for Hollywood stars. But it gave no details on the boy's name or his birth weight.
Spokespeople for Cruz and Bardem had so far refused to comment on the Spanish press reports since they emerged Tuesday.
The birth came just three days before Bardem received his third Academy Award nomination, for runescape money his performance in the film "Biutiful" by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Cruz, 36, and Bardem, 41, met when they starred opposite each other as lusty teens in the Spanish film "Jamon, Jamon," back in 1992.
In 2008, they were back together on the silver screen in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," for which Cruz won an Academy Award as best supporting actress.
The couple married in July last year at a ceremony in the Bahamas.
Bardem, also nominated for an Oscar in "Before Night Falls" (2000), won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in "No Country for Old Men."
Spain's leading daily, El Pais, quoted runescape accounts a family source as saying "the couple want to have as much privacy as possible."
"Friends of Bardem began to suspect (the baby was born) when the actor did not respond to any calls to congratulate him on his (Oscar) nomination," it added.
Bardem changed his work schedule to be at his wife's side for the birth, the paper said.
Hola! said Cruz's mother, Encarna, sister Monica -- also an actress -- and her brother Eduardo were at Cedars-Sinai for the birth.
Bardem's mother, well-known Spanish actress Pilar Bardem, traveled from Madrid on Monday to meet her grandson, according to the magazine.
The actors had kept their romance quiet for years, but Bardem got personal when he won a best actor award at the Cannes film festival in May for his role in "Biutiful."
"I share the joy of this prize with my friend, my companion, my love, Penelope Cruz," Bardem said at the time.
"I owe you so much, and I love you very much," he added, drawing tears from Cruz, a longtime muse of buy ffxiv gil Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
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