Schadenfreude, $40 mill, capitalist pigs
In my last post, I mentioned Jack Thompson, the lawyer who seems to have a personal vendetta against video games and video game companies. (Which is understandable since a roving band of video games attacked and killed his family. Or at least, that’s what I assume happened judging from his vociferous attack on the games industry.) Well, Jack Thompson is in trouble with the Florida Supreme Court. He risks potential disbarment. How does Jack Thompson respond? By suing the Florida Bar association. Hopefully, they have a few lawyers around. But seriously, it seems this guy always has a lawsuit ready to slap down “his enemies”.
Link: Jack Thompson Faces Florida Supreme Court Disciplinary Hearing
Joystiq reports that the XBox360 game, “Lost Planet” has a budget of $40 million. Half of it going to development, half to sales and marketing. With sums of money like that going to game development, and large portions of it going into marketing, it seems like the game industry is looking more and more like the movie industry.
Link: Lost Planet lost $40 million to find success
LATimes has an article about Soviet propaganda videos being packaged and sold as a DVD set. I think propaganda is pretty interesting, and even more interesting when they’re trying to demonize us - the West. (Of course, I’d be angry at their portrayals if communism had any life left in it.)
In 1995, Malibu producer Joan Borsten and her husband, the Russian-born actor Oleg Vidov, were poring over a library of animated films produced at Moscow’s Soyuzmultfilm Studio when they discovered buried among the children’s classics other films that caught their attention.
These were no Disney-like fairy tales or Russian folk stories. Instead, these animated short films intended for the Soviet masses painted a sinister portrait of life in capitalist America.
“Black and White,” produced in 1933, depicted a highway with an endless row of blacks lynched on telephone poles. “The Millionaire,” made in 1963, told the story of a rich American woman who leaves $1 million to her pet bulldog, who becomes so wealthy and powerful that he eventually is elected to Congress. And in the 1979 animated short “Shooting Range,” a jobless American youth finds work in a carnival shooting gallery only to discover the evil, greedy owner is now charging double — for people to use the youth as target practice.
Link: Soviet propaganda cartoons come to video (LA Times requires users to login to read the article. However, they seem to allow google direct access to the article. So, click on the LATimes link inside the google search and you won’t need to register.)