Tag Archives: mpw blog

MPW Blog: Mr. EULA and The Cloud – by Karl Huddleston

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The Cloud

You may remember a few years ago when Walmart announced its big “Cloud” initiative in relation to DVDs and Blu-ray movies. Basically, you could bring in all your discs that you had purchased in the past from anywhere, and they would take them and “give” you a copy of that movie “in The Cloud” that you would own “forever” and stream whenever you like.

Yeah, right.

This is the part where I love to introduce our good friend, “Mr. EULA” (pronounced “yoo-la”). I became good friends with Mr. EULA when I worked for seven years at a large software company doing compliance work. Essentially, my job was to make sure that all our customers had paid for all the software they were using, because they could install as many instances of the software as they wanted — at will. Continue reading →

MPW Blog: Remembering Rowdy Roddy Piper – by Jason Pyles

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Piper Cartoon

I’m sure it’s no consolation to the people who knew him as Roderick George Toombs, or “Dad,” but 61 is actually a fairly long life for a professional wrestler. I knew him best as Rowdy Roddy Piper. He died from a heart attack two days ago on July 31, 2015.

As a young wrestling fan, I remember Rowdy Roddy Piper most as a villain who played Hulk Hogan’s arch nemesis at the time. That dates me back to the days of Saturday morning cartoons and “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling,” which ran from 1985 to 1986 — not too long after the era as other animated brain children like The Dukes of Hazzard cartoon, “The Dukes” (1983), and the “Rubik, the Amazing Cube” cartoon! Continue reading →

MPW Blog: Alfred Hitchcock on the Difference Between Surprise and Suspense – by Jason Pyles

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Hitchcock Blog

Prelude
Welcome to the resurrection of the Movie Podcast Weekly blog articles. This will probably only last for one or two articles, so enjoy it.

The Disappearance of Suspense
Lately I’ve been lamenting the absence of genuine suspense in our present-day cinema, especially in the Horror genre. I’m worried that it’s getting to be a lost art, or at least, a lost portion from the cinematic form.

The cynical side of me suspects that the recent generations of filmmakers have stopped spending time learning from “the great ones,” the pioneering filmmakers of the 20th century. I’m worried that black and white film has scared them away.

But I have a more likely theory: I believe we’ve lost genuine suspense with the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Because we’re now able to conjure any being or environs out of thin air, I think the erroneous but pervasive belief must be that we don’t need to spend time “building up” to something; we can just make it happen right now.

Hence, the death of suspense. Continue reading →