Indiana Jones And The Pandora's Box
posted by Tygrrius @ 10:10 PM
"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."
--Johnny Carson
I was watching the Star Wars edition of Deal or No Deal on Monday night and kept looking for an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull commercial during the show. Since Indy is a Lucasfilm property, I figured it would be a natural. No trailer, though.
Deal or No Deal did at least offer up a fake Darth Vader (complete with a horrible James Earl Jones impersonation), a fake Chewie, a fake Artoo, and a real Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). There were also 26 Leia-inspired slavegirls, as promised in the promo. Contestant Brad Flinchum managed not to get too distracted by all of the eye candy, though, and walked away with $209,000. Not bad, considering that many Deal or No Deal contestants fail to quit in time. According to the show, Flinchum plans to use some of the money to renovate his basement and display his Star Wars collection.
So, anyway, I was watching some random show last night when an Indy commercial actually appeared. Much like the teaser trailer from a couple months back, the commercial was just kind of there. It didn't hype me for the movie at all, sorry to say.
I just tried to find it on the official Indiana Jones site, but that site always seems to crash my Flash player, even after just recently installing the newest version. I don't have that problem on other sites, just IndianaJones.com. Let's see, who else might have it. Maybe Yahoo. They have a TV spot, but not the one I saw. The one they had was marginally better, but nothing special.
I'd rather have a movie that's better than the trailers, than trailers that are better than the movie anyway. So, here's hoping. We'll find out in three weeks.
* * *
I've been trying out something called Pandora Radio over the last two or three days. It's a site that lets you set up a free, personalized Internet "radio" that streams songs not only by your favorite artists, but also by other artists that their Music Genome Project has identified as similar to your favorites. Due to licensing restrictions, the Pandora service is only available in the US.
You set up one "station" per artist. The cool part, though, is that you can then mix the stations so you can get a pretty good variety of music going. I've set up stations for about 40 of my favorite artists so far. The logic that picks related artists seems to work pretty well, too, as I've been liking most of the songs. Much better than a real radio station, let me tell you.
To satisfy the conditions of their music licensing agreements, it doesn't let you instantly replay a song or go to a specific song. But hey, you can't really do that stuff while listening to a real radio station, either. If you don't like a song, you can rate it a thumbs-down and it will skip to the next one. You can only skip so many songs per hour, again related to their agreements with the music industry. I've only hit this roadblock once, though.
At first I wondered why they called it "Pandora." Now that I'm addicted to it, though, I finally get it. Once you open this box, it's almost impossible to close it. Not unlike visiting here, right?
Aw, come on, you could've humored me. . . .
--Johnny Carson
I was watching the Star Wars edition of Deal or No Deal on Monday night and kept looking for an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull commercial during the show. Since Indy is a Lucasfilm property, I figured it would be a natural. No trailer, though.
Deal or No Deal did at least offer up a fake Darth Vader (complete with a horrible James Earl Jones impersonation), a fake Chewie, a fake Artoo, and a real Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). There were also 26 Leia-inspired slavegirls, as promised in the promo. Contestant Brad Flinchum managed not to get too distracted by all of the eye candy, though, and walked away with $209,000. Not bad, considering that many Deal or No Deal contestants fail to quit in time. According to the show, Flinchum plans to use some of the money to renovate his basement and display his Star Wars collection.
So, anyway, I was watching some random show last night when an Indy commercial actually appeared. Much like the teaser trailer from a couple months back, the commercial was just kind of there. It didn't hype me for the movie at all, sorry to say.
I just tried to find it on the official Indiana Jones site, but that site always seems to crash my Flash player, even after just recently installing the newest version. I don't have that problem on other sites, just IndianaJones.com. Let's see, who else might have it. Maybe Yahoo. They have a TV spot, but not the one I saw. The one they had was marginally better, but nothing special.
I'd rather have a movie that's better than the trailers, than trailers that are better than the movie anyway. So, here's hoping. We'll find out in three weeks.
* * *
I've been trying out something called Pandora Radio over the last two or three days. It's a site that lets you set up a free, personalized Internet "radio" that streams songs not only by your favorite artists, but also by other artists that their Music Genome Project has identified as similar to your favorites. Due to licensing restrictions, the Pandora service is only available in the US.
You set up one "station" per artist. The cool part, though, is that you can then mix the stations so you can get a pretty good variety of music going. I've set up stations for about 40 of my favorite artists so far. The logic that picks related artists seems to work pretty well, too, as I've been liking most of the songs. Much better than a real radio station, let me tell you.
To satisfy the conditions of their music licensing agreements, it doesn't let you instantly replay a song or go to a specific song. But hey, you can't really do that stuff while listening to a real radio station, either. If you don't like a song, you can rate it a thumbs-down and it will skip to the next one. You can only skip so many songs per hour, again related to their agreements with the music industry. I've only hit this roadblock once, though.
At first I wondered why they called it "Pandora." Now that I'm addicted to it, though, I finally get it. Once you open this box, it's almost impossible to close it. Not unlike visiting here, right?
Aw, come on, you could've humored me. . . .
Labels: miscellaneous, Star Wars
