I love movies. After technology and computers, movies are probably my 2nd favorite hobby. Between the theater a few times a month, Netflix and my own collection of 500+ DVDs in my home theater, I watch more than my fair share of movies.

Quite a few years ago, I started watching a variety of movie reviews in order to better choose which movies to watch. I quickly came down to Roger Ebert and the various co-hosts he's had for his TV show. Now, I rarely bother with anyone else's opinion.

Now, that's not because I always agree with Ebert. Far from it. However, after all of these years, I can tell fairly accurately, based on Ebert's opinion and Roeper's counterpoint or agreement, whether I will like a movie or not. I've never been too concerned with their "thumbs" rating system, as it's mostly a gimmick to get you to read or watch the more in depth reviews.

That explanation of *why* they gave it a thumbs up or thumbs down is usually exactly what I need to determine whether I'm willing to see a movie or not. Heck, some of his most enthusiastic reviews have been for movies I absolutely hated, but I wasn't surprised when I hated them because of why he was enthusiastic.

Unfortunately, I'm often looking at a DVD on Netflix or in the store or on Amazon, wondering what his review was, 6 months or 2 years ago or whatever, when the movie was released. The current episodes of his TV show are great for deciding which movie to see in the theater this weekend, but don't help so much for a movie released last year that is for sale for $12 at Amazon.

That's why I think it's very cool that they've put up pretty much every one of those TV reviews since 1985 and a bunch of stuff that goes back as far as the beginning of that TV show, in 1975. With that archive, I can now pull up those older reviews easily.

Very cool and puts value on that huge repository of video footage that isn't easily monetized in any of the traditional ways. It's not like we're going to buy DVD box sets of 30+ years of movie reviews. Nor are we going to tune in for old re-runs of reviews from 1991. However, to look up a movie you've never heard of or to see if that DVD on the discount rack might be a hidden gem, it's definitely useful.

This morning, I decided to dig down into the "Suggestions" entry at the bottom of my Tivo recordings. Because of how I have my main Tivo (yes we actually have 3), the suggestions sit in a seperate section that's a "click" away from the recordings that are there on purpose. As a result, it tends to get a bit dusty and filled with spiderwebs rather than cleaned out regularly.

Sitting in the midst of the long list of programs was something on HBO, called "Assume the Position". I gave it a shot and I'm glad I did.

Basically, it's Robert Wuhl

The title of this post is a quote that he uses regularly and is pretty much the "forest" view of this program (as opposed to any "tree" view nitpicking over details). The quote comes from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). After revealing to a journalist (Scott) that a lifelong legend isn't actually true, the following exchange happens:

Ransom Stoddard: You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The point is that many of the historical facts we hold to be "true" just don't hold up upon examination of the facts. From Paul Revere's 19 mile ride being expanded to fit the romantic notions of a poet to most of our ideas about Christopher Columbus coming from a historical novel, he makes the point that history is nothing more than the pop culture that survives and gets its meme reproduced.

I'm willing to bet that the primary criticism of the program is going to be over one or 2 of *his* facts that can be questioned. That's missing the point entirely. You should be thinking critically and looking at primary sources instead of just accepting what you're told. And, he makes that case very well.

Given that several recent studies are pointing to students' inability to actually evaluate the credibility of the massive flow of information they're exposed to on daily basis, this is a skill that is completely critical going forward.

Oh, it's *definitely* not G rated. There's plenty of cursing and one bawdy skit involved, so if you want your kids to see it, you should check it out yourself first and decide from there.

Last year, I mentioned some of the fan-created merchandise for the movie Serenity and the TV series, Firefly. Most of that merchandise, put up on sites like Cafepress was created in part because Universal (the people in charge of the movie) hadn't really put out anything. Like all good markets, when demand outstrips supply, there's an incentive to create, and the fans did just that.

Now, a year later, Universal shut pretty much all of those sites down. Many of the people in charge of those shut-down sites were OK with that. After all, the trademark *is* owned by Universal. Not worth fighting. However, one site got a bill from Universal for $9000 in back licensing.

This struck fans odd, and given that the big damn heroes in the series (the Browncoats) were rebels against the central authorities, they acted as you might expect. They've put up a site to gather all of the billable marketing hours that fans put in to promote the movie. Many, many people put in dozens of hours of work to promote the series *without pay* that Universal benefitted directly from.

The logic makes sense to me. After all, if the merchandiser made $9000 that Universal "deserved", then the fans deserve the $1.2 million that the free marketing adds up to as I'm writing this.

I've been tempted to bill service companies for my time spent waiting when service people don't show up and seeing this Browncoat invoice just makes me smile.