Caffeinated Clint – 25/4/08

The Future is Here

I know we all expected to be flying around in spaceships, getting head from our robot maid’s on a daily basis, and working for companies like Spacely Sprockets by the time 2000 rolled around, and whilst that hasn’t happened, you have to admit we’ve still come far!

Think about it. Ten years ago, the Internet was a luxury (I luxury only schools and universities could afford to have); not everyone had a cell phone or DVD player; Plasma’s and LCD’s were just words you’ve never heard before;

I still remember having to sneak into my ex-girlfriend’s university computer room just to use this wonderful new Internet contraption. I believe it was about 1996. She’d watch the door, whilst I played on the tiny mac in the corner. It was just phenomenal. I’d found a place where I could find out anything, and everything, about movies. I was introduced to sites like Movieweb, the IMDB (man, that was impressive the first time I saw it), Aint it Cool News (believe it or not, it’s look hasn’t changed a lot in ten years), Dark Horizons (I’d soon become good friends with Garthie F) and the official website of Dimension Films (I think they were one of the first to adopt the web). I also discovered something called ‘Chat’. How that novelty quickly died.

About a month later, when I started work at a film company, I had the chance to use the Internet again – permanently, and whenever I wanted. Wow. Not only was “Party of 5” bringing back Kirsten, I got to ‘Yahoo!’ whenever I darn well pleased.

It was then that I was informed that I’d be the guy to ‘look into all these internet sites, keep a tab on what the movie ones are saying about our movies – make friends, offer what you can to them’ – if only because nobody was really familiar with the Info Superhighway back then, so they’ll probably afraid they were going to ‘hurt it’ if they attempted to ‘log on’. So I did. My relationship with the internet blossomed from here on out – as a PR whore I’d speak to all the webmasters (all 3 or 4 of them back then) about running studio-specific content for us. It was the beginning of my love affair with the WWW.

Within a few weeks, I was slipping these guys insider gossip about what films were in production at the company, exclusive DVD artwork and jpegs of upcoming titles, and even writing up reviews – under aliases, which they were fine with – for titles I had previewed, not necessarily ones that I was working on myself. I remember a Van Damme one I was lucky enough to have seen a few months before release…. Hmmm… now what was that? Whatever it was, it was shit, and I didn’t mind telling the internetians.

About six months later, I found myself with a barrage of contacts (largely from my work in film, and acquisitions, which I also worked in by this time), a nice nifty knowledge of how the web worked, but more so, an interest in starting off a website myself. With my friend Beth Chick, Moviehole – or rather ‘Cinema Clint’ as it was known for about two weeks – was born. I tell ya, we had at least twenty people visit us within that first year. Better than a headjob from Ione Skye, I thought. Ha. Now, with the millions of visitors we get each month, I could probably do without the Skye head (if only because Ben Lee has her preoccupied at the moment).

Anyway, I’m getting off-track, what I’m saying is…. We have come far. The Internet was something I hardly ever had access to – and even then, I had to sneak into an educational institution to use it; sometimes making out I was part of the ‘class’ – and then suddenly, it surrounded me.

Oh….

Ten years ago, you’ll recall, that most of us were still on Dial-Up.

My god… how did we ever cope?! It not only took us ten years to get ONTO the bloody internet, but we’d have to put aside half-a-day, if you wanted to send friggin images to someone. It was such a pain Dial-Up… the phone was always tied up, the connection would constantly drop, and forget about loading a website that was graphics-heavy or used some kind of animation. As fun as using the internet was back then, it was also a bit of a chore.

For about the past five years or so, Broadband/Cable has been the norm Down Under. Work became a lot easier for me when it was introduced – and suddenly, the Hooters website started to load a lot faster than it did when my internet ran on AA batteries and a phone cable. In all seriousness, it was a blessing. It has spoiled us to the shitz, but its still been a blessing – an endless resource, a tool like no other (except perhaps Pauly Shore). You can do anything and everything on the net these days.
All I can say to those that are still on Dial-Up – by choice – is are you retarded? Are you seriously saving yourself that much money by not upgrading? Don’t you know how much faster your pages load and your spam comes through on ADSL or Cable? It’s time to join the noughties, ya fool.

Nearly three-quarters of Web surfers in the United States have broadband Internet connections at home, up from just 57 percent a year ago, according to a study released recently. The sharp drop of dial-up users from 43% to 28% in one year, combined with record DSL additions for telcos, suggest much of this is thanks to discount introductory DSL offers. What’s going to lure those remaining dial-up laggards to broadband? Video, suggests the firm.

“We’re past the point where decreasing prices and increasing availability will move the needle for providers; the remaining consumers will be pushed to broadband as the Internet continues to move beyond text-based information to a comprehensive source for video,” the company said in a statement.

Heck, even my Mum has broadband internet. And she lives in the country. She Facebook’s, she Chats, she watches trailers, she reads graphic-heavy websites… she even Skypes. For my Mum, who hadn’t even seen “L.A Confidential” until last week, to have a high-powered internet workstation is saying something!. Heck, I know a few Grandma’s that are ‘Online’.

Speaking of, isn’t it hilarious how far the cell phone has come? I still remember my old brick – the big fat black Motorola I had when I was about 21, with its big glowing orange numbers, and Supermarket-checkout type screen. It was so fuckin big, I’d have to tie it around my neck with a rope. There was no way I was fitting it in my god darn pocket.

Now, everyone – yes, even my Mum! – has a mobile phone. I’ve seen little kids with mobile phones. You can get a phone for free these days… that’s how available they are. My grandparents have mobile phones – they mightn’t know how to text (anything understandable) but they still own cellular devices. It’s quite funny, actually. Within a year they’ll all have freehand Bluetooth headphones on, walking down the street to collect the paper.

I also remember how expensive it used to be to own a mobile phone though. I still remember getting $500 bills from my service company back in the 90s. Man, did I even make 5 calls?! I definitely didn’t text… because you couldn’t back then. Now, you can a nice pre-paid plan for about 30 bucks, and it’ll last you a couple of months – they usually throw in 100 free text messages, too. My service provider also lets me talk to America – which I do every day, and several times a day, usually to my producing partner – for about 7 bucks a month…. As long as I want, and as much as I want.

Oh, and hands up who doesn’t own a big-screen Plasma or LCD? We’ve nearly all got one – or two. I’ve got a nice big Plasma installed to my wall for less than a few grand. Ten years ago, a ‘multi-system’ television that’d play that U.S ‘Das Boot’ DVD (I use that as an example because I remember putting ‘Das Boot’ in my very first DVD machine only to discover It wouldn’t play on the TV because it came from a different region – and the TV only played PAL) I got from the states would’ve been luxury.

And speaking of, could George Jetson buy DVDs as cheap as we can? I think not. I saw nothing even resembling a DVD in the Jetson’s home whilst Rosie was cleaning up. When DVDs first came out, you couldn’t buy an ex-rental DVD for less than $20 (I know, I remember buying “American Pie” and “Go” for that much from a video store), now you can pick some absolute gems – gems that have only been on the shelves for a couple of months – for about $5. In the past week, I picked up “Blades of Glory”, “Die Hard 4.0” and the 2-disc “Unbreakable” for that much from a video store….

Tell me times haven’t changed? Tell me the future hasn’t arrived?