Over the weekend I went to our newly reopened Drive-In in Greenwood, SC (http://25drivein.com: not the greatest website but I guess it gets the job done.)

What did I see you ask….I saw the Double Feature of Star Trek and Wolverine.

Star Trek was still awesome. Wolverine was not as bad as I had heard…but I could have done without the Professor X thing at the end…value add…nothing.

The drive in is nice. The owners have spent a great deal of effort in getting things in running order. The bulbs they bought for the screen are incredible. It’s the best outdoor screen I have ever seen. They are having some trouble with the audio broadcast though. You have to find a good parking spot to pick up the audio on your radio and even then you get the occasional interference. But I have confidence they will work this out eventually.

One last thing about the drive in. Compared to the regular theatre…it’s cheap…$7 for adults and $5 dollars per kid. For a double feature of 2 new run movies…That’s like $3.50 for each movie for me… Their concessions are cheaper than most places too…especially since you can get burgers and fries in addition to the normal popcorn.

How about you? Do you have a local drive-in?

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Was doodling the other day during a meeting…enjoyed these characters…thought I would share.

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Thanks to Hulu.com and Boxee I was able to catch the premiere episode of Joss Weadon’s latest series Dollhouse.

My first thought about the show was that is was a ripoff of the Top Cow 90’s comic book Aphrodite IX that has a similiar premise of a young woman who is a special agent/assassin who has her memory wiped after every mission to protect her as well as the agency. The storyline in Dollhouse seems to follow the same line of thought even with the main character having to have a handler who takes care of her on the missions.

After I calmed down and told myself that it was ok because the idea was still a good idea and I was glad to see it make itself to live action I was able to be more objective.

I thought the writing on the pilot episode was superb. The acting was above par. The character development was well executed.

Character development is one of the harder things to execute well in a pilot episode with so many characters involved. Eliza Dushku, who plays the lead character Echo, does an excellent job jumping in and out of roles as her memory is wiped and then re-uploaded to suit her current “engagement.” Tahmoh Penikett, (Helo from the new Battlestar Galactica) plays Paul Ballard who is trying to track down the Dollhouse and I would have to say has one of the more interesting scenes in the pilot. During a conversation with his superiors we see Paul having flashbacks to a boxing match. The boxing match coincides punch for punch as he fights for a continuation on searching for the Dollhouse. The way Paul responds in the ring is very similiar to how he handles his business relationships and in the end we learn a lot about this character’s determination. The other characters in the show are not as well developed but there is only so much time in a 1 hour show but I did feel like they touched on a few of those characters enough so that I look forward to learning more about them in later episodes.

I recommend this show.

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Later this week, Hulu’s content will no longer be available through Boxee. While we never had a formal relationship with Boxee, we are under no illusions about the likely Boxee user response from this move. This has weighed heavily on the Hulu team, and we know it will weigh even more so on Boxee users. (via blog.hulu.com)

I can see it now. Some corporate moron hears about how his niece is watching Hulu using this slick little interface called Boxee. He tells his boss who tells his boss who tells his boss. Then the next thing you know there is a meeting at corporate about how Boxee is a great idea and they should be developing their own thing where they control everything…dollar signs flash and a memo is sent to Hulu for them to get this under control and make way for their new killer software/hardware.

The one thing it seems that big content providers can not get through their thick skulls is that consumers do not go backwards when it comes to technology. They always move forward. It used to be that the content providers drove the technology. That is just not true anymore and they need to accept it.

How much success would the movie industry have if they decided to start putting all their new releases on video tape instead of DVD. Those are 2 technologies they help pioneer and they can see the obvious drawbacks of going backwards.

To the consumer progress in technology is progress no matter who makes the technology. We could care less. All we know is that the new way is better and we have gotten used to it and if you try to take it out of our hands and revamp it to suit the contents providers needs then consumers will move forward while you are making deals and trying to figure out how to monetize.

Thanks to Veronica Belmont for the heads up on twitter.

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The RSS feeds were down. They appear to be up now. Weird.

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My name is…..

Smokey Da Man?
Second Hand Smoe?
Ash?
Pack A Day Dan?
The Smoke Whispererer?

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