Maybe the movie is bad, but…
You’ve probably read reviews like this.
I just read ‘Street Kings’ comes up empty, by Craig D. Lindsey, Staff Writer for the Raleigh News & Observer. Here’s how it begins:
Whenever I know there’s a Keanu Reeves movie coming, I can count on it being spectacularly, hysterically, almost hilariously bad. And “Street Kings” certainly does not disappoint.
Okay, why read more? He thinks the movie was bad. In fact, he knew it would be bad before he watched it. One almost wonders why he bothered—first why he bothered actually watching the movie and then why he bothered actually writing a review. He went in prejudiced against the film because it had to be “spectacularly, hysterically, almost hilariously bad”. (And yes, I know he watched and wrote because it’s his job.)
He went in looking for the bad and probably congratulated himself every single time he saw anything that might support his prediction. Ah yes, such a clever fellow—and somehow the fact that he did find the negative made it all worthwhile. Somehow it was a good time at the movies.
It apparently did not occur to him to reassure us that he was quite open to being wrong, and that in fact he would have been wonderfully happy to find that Keanu Reeves brought his character to life as no other actor could have done and that the story both excited and touched him deeply.
Or would a good movie-viewing experience really have been a disappointment for not measuring up (or down) to his preconceptions?
Twitter reconsidered
When I first heard of Twitter, and for months afterward, my reaction was simple—sounds like a real waste of time. A 140-character limit. What’s that, two or three sentences? I mean, who the hell cares most of the time what you’re doing at this very minute? It didn’t help that most of the examples I heard seemed to focus on the trivial. “I’m having a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s. With fries and a Coke. Yum!”
Give me a break.
Then I read something or somebody said something. I don’t remember who or what, but it made me reconsider. Whatever, I thought I’d dive in and give Twitter a chance. For the first week I twittered several times a day, but then I tapered off to once or twice a day. I have a few followers, mostly people I know. They follow me, I follow them, and we’re all pretty sporadic.
If that’s all there was to it, Twitter wouldn’t be anything special for me. But after a few weeks, I started following a selection of folks involved in the ad industry, people I don’t know but who were quite active on Twitter and who, it turned out, often made observations that really helped me in my work as a Flash developer for an ad agency. It might be a link to a website or a blog post, or comments on a new commercial or advertising campaign. Whatever, it involved me in a wider world of advertising than I was exposed to in my day-to-day work.
Little things here and there. Nudges. There’s stuff to learn and to be excited about. And it’s fun.
Now I have an experiment in mind.