Categories
Media Bob

Monty Python, the Wall Street Journal and the meaning of life …

In his “The Game” column the other day, the Wall Street Journal’s Dennis K. Berman did a column on BHP Billington’s $132b offer for Rio Tinto, which would bring together two of the world’s largest mining companies. His column included this quote:

“In the 19th century, countries were prone to dispatch navies to secure a flow of goods. Today, they send investment bankers.”

I smiled at the idea, which clearly is true, and immediately my mind went to the sketch that opens Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life,” which I still rank as their greatest work:

Amazing, how the Pythons pull it all together here …

Categories
Movie Bob

I’m not weird at all …

A friend who is studying film at UCLA just shot me a link to this clip that she directed. Neat stuff. She’s come a long way since she interned with us in Knoxville …

Categories
Web Bob

Be the star of your own movie …

When I was at Scripps, we created a fund to invest in innovative ideas. We called it the Entrepreneur Fund, and it’s spawned a lot of neat projects. But the one I’m most geeked about has just gone into beta and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. It’s called RootClip, and the general idea is that someone creates a one minute video segment of a story — a root clip. Other folks then jump in and create the next segment, with site users voting on which one should become the next installment. Ideally, you end up with a coherent story created by multiple filmmakers and driven by popular vote.

Check it out. If it’s going to succeed, it will need to attract a broad range of aspiring filmmakers who are willing to play along …