Thursday, March 22, 2007

Got $50 to spend on music?



Of course you do. If you're like me you easily spend more than that on CDs, LPs, and digital music files each year already. But Peter Jenner says $50 a year is all it would take to save music. He made his argument at a panel held at SXSW last week called Reinventing Payment Models for Digital Music. The influential manager of musical acts from Pink Floyd to The Clash to Billy Bragg has publicly gone off on this subject before, but this time he's put forth a bold and simple solution to the situation. And no one has to put up with any crappy DRM schemes.

Needless to say, I like this idea. But do you think anyone at the Big Four will listen? Color me doubtful . . . but hopeful.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

U2 in 3-D


If only this was some kind of B-grade science fiction flick where Bono's head swells to ginormous proportions, threatens to block out the sun, and only the Edge can save him. But no, it's simply a concert film shot entirely in 3-D. Its producers say the movie, creatively titled "U2 3D," is in fact the very first live action movie ever shot, edited, and publicly shown entirely in 3-D. The company behind the movie is called Real D, and they've worked on a boatload of projects from various studios, everything from Disney's latest cartoon Meet The Robinsons to 3-D remakes of classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as StereoGraphics scientific 3-D visualization products. "U2 3D" was shot during the South American leg of the Vertigo tour in 2006.

Real D 3-D isn't like the stereoscopic film you may remember from your childhood, though. All the 3-D rendering is done in digital for a much higher quality level, and you can't even watch a RealD-ified movie in a standard theater. You have to see it in a cinema outfitted for the RealD experience. While RealD has made serious strides in 3-D technology, here's a heads up: you still have to wear special glasses. You don't have to feel silly for wearing dark glasses in a theater, though . . . you know Bono will be wearing his.

Photo from PulseTC.com