The first posts you have access to pay about $6 a post. The more you post the more points you earn and this gives you access to the higher paying posts. The system allows you to post your own opinion. However, the advertiser has to approve the post, so this might impair your ability to give an objective opinion, but our review of Pro360 was by no means a praising of the service and it got approved.
The Smorty service is ideal if you want to blog for money but do not get enough traffic to support the pay per a click systems such as Adsense. I can vouch for Smorty in that they paid promptly straight into my PayPal account.
One problem I have had with the service, which is not really a problem, is that there are very few post options that are relevant to this blog. Once more companies start to use Smorty to advertise on blogs this problem will resolve itself.
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It's been on YouTube forever so you've probably already seen it. Over here is a flash app that shows the effects of drugs on the brain with the use of mice as a visual aid.
The Explanations aren't so interesting but watching the mice act like they are on drugs should entertain you for a solid 60 seconds.
Then if that spider decided it was a good idea to drop some acid his web might end up looking something like this on the right.
That looks pretty groovy but what if that spider had thought, "You know what I don't really want to see giant Oranges running up the sides of buildings chasing Evan Rachel Wood. Why not try mescaline Hunter S. Thompson used to do that it would be pretty cool. "
Well then the spider would end up producing a web more like this one on the left.
Ok, so I'm sure we can all agree that if Spiderman is taking on Doc Ock he should definitely rather be on acid than mescaline. You wouldn't be able to beat many super villains with that web.
Ok so the peyote is not for you. Why not rather sit back and smoke some hash.
Well then the spider would manage to spin this out of his ass.
But maybe the spider decides that drugs aren't for him. Instead he heads down to Wimpy for a nice cheese burger and caps it off with a good old cup of coffee.
This is what would happen to his web:
So if any of you out there happen to be spiders stay away from the Red Bull cause that shit will fuck you up.
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Bee Movie captured 1st place at the box office in its second weekend of release after opening in second last weekend to American Gangster. "It's so rare to do what Bee Movie has done," Media by Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian told the Los Angeles Times, attributing the jump to "terrific word of mouth." This is an interesting statement from Dergarabedian but before I discuss why this is so interesting and unusual let us first learn a little more about Dergarabedian and Media by Numbers.
According to the Media by Numbers website Dergarabedian has been the industries most widely respected and widely quoted expert for nearly 15 years. Media by Numbers goal is to provide in-depth analysis and perspective for everything in the box-office and filmed entertainment industry. According to them, “We don’t just give you data. We help you understand it, use it, learn from it and profit from it.”
I am not disputing the validity of Media by Numbers mission statement. What I am concerned about is the validity, or intentions, behind Dergarabedian’s Bee Movie statement. Interestingly although Bee Movie has become number one in its second weekend its second weekend drop is worse than previous animated films that opened in early November. Consider the following:
Chicken Little – 21.0% drop
Monsters, Inc. – 27.2% drop
The Incredibles – 28.7% drop
Bee Movie – 32.8% drop
In addition Bee Movie has lower user ratings than each of these films (with the exception of The Internet Movie Database user rating for Chicken Little):
Chicken Little Yahoo User Rating: B- IMDB User Rating: 5.8
Monsters, Inc. Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 7.9
The Incredibles Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 8.2
Bee Movie Yahoo User Rating: C+ IMDB User Rating: 6.5
In addition Bee Movie’s second weekend drop is less remarkable in light of the Veterans Day weekend meaning more kids would have been out watching movies on Sunday. This is more likely the main factor helping lead Bee Movie to a first place finish rather than word of mouth.
This analysis is interesting for one specific reason. When the media says a film has terrific word of mouth it convinces the public that the people who are watching the film are loving it. However, clearly the yahoo and IMDB user ratings paint a different picture.
It is an interesting explanation from an analyst with over 15 years of experience to give and one has to wonder if Dergarabedian is a credible news source or if he is merely a spin machine being used by certain Hollywood players.
Read It...They are Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Bee Movie, Beowulf, Meet the Robinsons, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Surf’s Up, Tekkonkinkreet, TMNT.
Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beowulf and Persepolis have not yet had their required LA qualifying runs. 3 Films will be chosen for Oscar nominations, which will be announced on Tuesday, January 22, 2008.
My money is on Ratatouille and Beowulf to definitely get nominated with a wild card coming from a foreign film or box office powerhouses Shrek and The Simpsons.
I’m glad to hear the Aqua Teens submitted, who cares if they have a snowballs chance in hell. Hopefully they won’t try any guerrilla tactics to promote themselves to the academy. Who do you think will get the nod?
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You have to love the mainstream media for being completely useless. It was big news in April when Grindhouse was released and had a mega-disappointing opening of $11.6 million. The $60-million film only grossed $24 million in ticket sales by the end of its run.The media was a blaze with speculation as to why the high profile project failed. Generally the blame was pointed at the project being badly marketed. Apparently a large portion of the market didn’t realize that the film was in fact two separate features being played together with fake trailers in between.
The two features being Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror. The media blamed the poor performance on Planet Terror mainly because critics loved Death Proof and many ticket patrons not knowing it was a double bill left after Planet Terror (which screened first). It also seems so did the studio as The Weinstein Co. decided to withdraw Grindhouse from Cannes in favour of a longer cut of the isolated Death Proof.
The poor box-office performance resulted in The Weinstein Co deciding to release the films separately on DVD and internationally. Now we have reached a phase in time where both films have had their separate DVD releases. And the media has done… nothing.
Death Proof has been in release for around 7 weeks and Planet Terror has now completed its 3rd. Yet there is no buzz about what happened with their sales figures. Well lets fill you in.
Planet Terror has convincingly drawn larger numbers than Death Proof in almost every respect. The film that was blamed for the failure of the Grindhouse venture is the more financially successful of the two. Lets look at the numbers.
Here are the first two weeks of DVD sales for Planet Terror and Death Proof:
Death Proof DVD Week 1 - 367,661 total units sold - $8,242,960 total gross
Planet Terror DVD Week 1 - 424,474 total units sold - $9,741,678 total gross
Death Proof DVD Week 2 - 479,019 total units sold - $10,803,080 total gross
Planet Terror DVD Week 2 - 561,524 total units sold - $12,886,976 total gross
Thus Planet Terror is about $2 million ahead of Death Proof after they both had two weeks of release. In terms of rentals Death Proof debuted to the tune of $2.87 million while Planet Terror soared past this with $5.77 million in its first week. As it currently stands Death Proof grossed $12.16 million after 7 weeks, while Planet Terror has grossed $14.45 million after just 3 weeks.
Anyway these figures would suggest that Planet Terror is the stronger of the two features. Plus there is this poll on sucksorrules.com that suggests the same thing. I think somebody owes Robert Rodriquez an apology.
Here are the Trailers:
The following videos were selected in a Think Green video competition at rollmio. Firstly, I'd like to say that the videos that came in the top three were just not that great (in fact nor were the special mentions). Obviously the competition was open to the public and clearly people were not working on these with large amounts of time or money. However, what shocks me is the unoriginality of the concepts, each add looks like something that's been done before.
Anyway here are the ads in there order of placing and my comments.
1st Place:
What the hell's up with this country song? The big problem with this ad is that if it does stop people from littering the world will still suffer from a large excess of vomit caused by this ad. Plus what's up with the music at the end? Has anyone here heard of a little something called phasing out?
2nd Place:
This is in another language so I don't catch the phrase at the end, which might have helped me get it. The point is fairly obvious when it is viewed in context but if this popped up on TV randomly I'd have no idea what this was about. On the plus side this is definitely the best produced video of the lot.
3rd Place:
Well done on finding the most annoying kid's laugh in the world. I almost dumped the entire contents of by bin out the window in protest of this. Plus an animated tree growing in an environmental commercial, I've never seen that before. Well done.
Special Mention 1:
This one gets some points for originality and spirit. Main problem have these guys not heard of sound editing? The music was so muffled I thought I had a hearing problem.
Special Mention 2:
This one works the best on the whole. Again nothing spectacularly new but this definitely should have come somewhere.
Special Mention 2 or The Toilet Selection:
This, seriously? What the hell? I definitely do not want to "keep the trash in the bin" after watching that. I guess none of these resorted to sex to make a sale but then again maybe they should of. Leave your comments. How would you rank them? Oh and in case you came here looking for pictures of puppies:
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Have you ever wanted to gamble online but have been scared off by the mass of options. That’s where Pro360 comes in. Pro360 is an online casino review system. They list a bunch of online rooms and provide reviews of them. The rooms are arranged according to rank and have been rated by both the site and user reviews. It’s easy to narrow the list down to your game of choice: craps, poker etc.
The incentives are obvious for such a business. They get the referral fees from the casinos that they sign up people for. Obviously there is nothing wrong with this and Pro360 have set up some fairly impressive bargains for people who go through them. For instance, if you sign up with Titan poker regularly you get a $200 sign up bonus but if you go through Pro360 that increases to $500.
Problems:
There are 76 poker rooms and Party Poker is not one of them. It just doesn’t make sense to not review one of the biggest poker rooms if that’s what you are about. There is also no mention of Absolute poker, which as has been mentioned earlier on this blog, is going through a bit of a scandal. I think it would be a nice addition to mention the dodgy gambling destinations and some kind of warning. Otherwise the whole thing is a good idea but it just doesn’t go far enough.
Read It...The Good: Generally an enjoyable show and will definitely please a large portion of Grey’s fans. It’s also good to see Daily and Diggs on shows that will actually stick around. Plus Adelstein just continues to impress me (did any one catch him on Scrubs – hilarious).
The Bad: One of the things that makes Grey’s work so well is that it is in Seattle and filmed with a greyish or dull tint, which is contrasted by cheesy character moments. The cheesy moment seem less cheesy in the bleak setting of the show. Practice on the other hand plays it’s equally cheesy (or possibly more so) elements against a very bright and cheerful atmosphere, making it kind of vomit inducing at times.
The Ugly: I’ve seen two episodes so far and none of the medical cases have been particularly interesting. Which is strange because the Grey’s formula is: Find an unusual medical case - Apply it to the character on an emotional level - then further allow it to be a point of reflection for one of the main characters. Also there's an unattractive receptionist/surfer with no acting ability and flabby man boobs who continues to walk around shirtless. Disturbing.
The Verdict: This show was the top debut of the season for awhile until fellow ABC freshman show, Samantha Who?, knocked it off that pedestal. Plus the ratings have been continuously high and it has already been picked up for a full season. This one is bound to be a success and with time the writers and actors will be able to better define the characters and their situations.
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Want to get paid for blogging? Try Smorty.
Animals seem to be getting high left, right and center.
It's the battle of the Grindhouse. Who do you think will win? I'll give you a clue it's not Morgan Freeman.
Do you want to read a post filled with really bad environmental commercials? No, what if I told you there's free candy... and makeup? Now maybe? Ok, ok, I'm sorry I'm just really bad at giving away free puppies. That's right there are pictures of cute fluffy little puppies in this post. Just read on. [note joke stolen from 
Have you ever wanted to gamble online but have been scared off by the mass of options. Maybe there is a solution...
For those of you who can't get enough of Grey's Anatomy here's the spin off...
