[Plasma Shield]

Update: Hip to be Square: I am Iron Man, Part 2 [Movie Review]

Ladies (scoff) and gentlemen. My name is Undead Knight and I’ll be talking about the latest and greatest in nerd fashion. Oxymoron much? In this column, I’ll be talking about movies, comic book, video games, TV shows, whatever. If it’s upcoming, nerdy, and it’s going to be big I’ll ramble on about it. I wanted to start off with a bang so I figured I’d go with the biggest thing for nerds so far this year…

Iron Man: The Movie

I saw the trailer. I quite honestly have no idea what to expect from it. If I am to go solely on the trailer, this movie could go either way. And I have to go on the trailer seeing as I can’t actually make a judgement on the film until it is released on May 1st. For those of you who have no idea who he is, Iron Man is millionaire (Upgraded to Billionaire in the film) Tony Stark who after being kidnapped makes a metal suit with gadgets that he uses fights crime. This is where (from what I can tell) the Movie is in directly in line with the book, though there are other slightly altered links that have been modernised. For example, instead of being kidnapped by “Commies” like in the comic, he’s kidnapped by terrorists. He is a weapons manufacturer in the movie, where as he’s just an inventor that had his technology used in weapons in the books. This is rather a moot point however. If I’m going to comment on this, I need to start listing good and bad points.

The Good ***

It looks amazing. The special effects are really outstanding. The only word I can use is sexy. At times, I wish I looked as good as these effects do. **** This leads to my first law of nerd movies: “Special Effects are directly proportionate to the “kick ass” of the Action.” And from what I can tell, it fits here. Iron man looks all sleek and shiny, the bullets and flames all look realistic. He is generally a robotic badass, which is what we want from the movie. Also, there is some quality humour (“Is it cool if I get a picture with you?” “Yes, It’s very cool.”) and the dialogue appears to be well written. (more…)

Recent data released by the Newspaper Association of America show that advertising revenue in 2007 fell from about 46 Billion to 42 billion a loss of 9.4% and 4 billion dollars. This is huge.

the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years >> Editor and Publisher

This reduction is another indicator pointing to the growing move to online media for content and advertisements. The second worst reduction in revenue of the industry was only 6 years ago in 2001, a fall of about 9%. Losses were experienced across print advertisement, national print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year, retail slipped 5% to $21 billion, classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.

Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms

John Sturm(Sturm’s a pretty cool name, “sturmarbeiter” is stormtrooper in german), president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

Personally, I still like newspapers, there’s just something about reading the newspapers, the feel and the texture that you get when you hold it in your hand. Not to mention the ability to roll it up and hit people with it. That said, the convenience and dynamic format of online newspapers totally out weights the said advantages. I mean, you can’t link to youtube or other newspapers in a paper newspaper, you can’t type a comment in and have people be able to read it instantly, and you can’t send people links to a article in a (paper) news paper, the closest thing to that is folding the piece of paper with the article on it into a plane and throw it at the person you want to give it to. The most important thing that online newspapers has got going for them is that most of them are free. The two dollars or so you pay is pretty cheap already, but not as cheap as free. (more…)