Movies and the Internet

The movie I chose that interests me is calls Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, the website address that I found it on was http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438488/. This web site offers a lot of extra features then most other websites because not only does it offer insightful information such as the plot of the movie and the actors playing the characters in the movie. The movie itself isn’t being released until June 2009 which is well over a year and they already know who’s playing main parts in the movie. For example Christian Bale is playing a main character in the movie John Connor, if you like most of his other movies he was in and like the science fiction genre you would be likely to see this. It gives you a plot keywords section which has keywords that define the movie in this case it says Fourth Part, The Terminator, Sequel, Post Apocalyptic, 2010s, so right from there even if you have no idea what the movie is about it breaks it down for you into a few easy words that make you understand what the basis of this movie is about. It’s a simple easy way to know the setting and what time the movie takes place and that there have been other movies before it. So if you really want to see it you can see the other three movies before it because it tells you fourth part. You wouldn’t know that by just seeing the title because it’s just Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.
This website also shows message boards on topics about the upcoming movie. Facts and rumors about who else is going to be acting in this movie is a neat feature. It’s a simple but a website with a lot of depth in that you can obtain a lot of information from a simple web page and don’t have to click around to get to what you’re looking for you just put in the title of the movie and it’s what you need to know. What I gained from the website that I couldn’t gain just seeing the movie is learning about facts of the movie itself. Usually when you see a movie you look at the movie trailer and think it’s interesting and then see it. With this website you can look deeper into movies to see if it really interests with other peoples comments and see if it’s good in other people’s opinions rather then just movie critics.
The purpose this web site served in regard to this movie is that it’s a work in progress and it gets updated now and then because the movie isn’t coming out for another year. It’s purpose is to get into some of the details about movies that have been released and movies that are going to be released. In a way it tried to encourage a continuation of the story line to leave the door open for a sequel because people in the message boards were talking about it and it said Terminator movie TBA for the one after this one. Websites on movies can give you good information without spoiling the movie for you. If you’re into a movie enough I think imdb.com is a great site to get your information on any movie that has been released or is pending release.

To Alter or Not to Alter

I have mixed feelings about the publications practice to alter an image, on one hand it can’t be that harmful to a person and on the other hand it can. The ways it can’t be too harmful in my opinion are where if for a picture of a landscape for example, they brighten up the sky or enhance the suns rays to make the picture itself look better but ways where I think it can be harmful is for Women’s health magazines, there have been instances where they enhance the models appearance to seem even more likeable. This is bad because it can continue to put out a false image. If these major magazine companies keep doing this it will only make matters worse for the young teens in the nation. The younger you are the easier you are influenced by this type of media and if someone wants to aspire to be like someone and the way they look and they see an already thin model with the image altered this can be potentially dangerous. Could this type of magazine altering lead to one of the reasons that so many young people in this country are anorexic?

Changing a frown is one thing because I don’t think that can come off as potentially harmful rather then putting out a fake image. Something that we’re used to as a nation. It depends on the image in my mind, I don’t think there is any problem with it until it’s a magazine about how to look good or lose weight and the person being portrayed is an altered image. It can almost be put out as an unattainable goal that some of these people don’t know about. I think it’s acceptable are certain times but times like I just explained then no. If the company wants to sell a story about Prince William smiling then frowning then what’s so bad about that. The only thing that I can see negative that can possibly come about from this is if a certain publication can do that what’s to stop others from doing the same thing and worse as a continuing trend. I think it’s acceptable as far as advertising for food or clothing products. It’s a smart thing to do that has always worked. When you see a certain food product it almost never looks like the way it was advertised but yet you’re still inclined to buy it. With clothes they always put them on a model to enhance sales. So it’s for the good of the company to make money, if any one of us were put in the position to make more money without hurting anyone I think we would do it.

I came across a magazine and was convinced that it was fake. I then searched some more and found the original headline and that this new one was a play on the original one about National Lampoon. The headline for Texas Monthly reads “If you Don’t Buy This Magazine Dick Cheney Will Shoot You in the Face.” I thought it was fake because this magazine came out a mere month to 6 weeks after the now infamous hunting incident with Dick Cheney. I never saw the magazine before but I heard about it. It’s obviously altered because it looks like a very real but cartoonish image. I think if the sole purpose of this magazine was to get a laugh and get sales because of it, it did a good job. If they’re using a completely fake image that’s altered to look real that shouldn’t matter because it’s up to the people to decide if they will be influenced by it or not.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686303_1692246,00.html

Print vs. Web

The newspaper I chose was the The Spectrum, which included similarities and differences with the paper on February 6th. The first thing I noticed was that online there was a front page link that if you clicked it, it would bring you to an identical version of the front page of the spectrum. I saw no differences here in that they might want to give you the front page news of the same paper that’s in print. The front page usually contains the top stories and whether online or in print I would think the University would want to show it either way. For instance there was a story about UB celebrating Mardi Gras and another story of how the drug Celebrex can have a very dangerous side effect. I think they have these both in print and online because they like to show the varying stories and issues going on with the campus and outside life. They don’t want to take away from the main part of the newspaper no matter if you look at it in print or online.

If you didn’t click the front page link and just went to the main page of the website you wouldn’t see the same stories as the front page of the Spectrum in print. Online it showed the “most important” stories. Such as UB researchers finding a drug with dangerous side effects and an event held at the Student Union which forced African-American students to sit in segregation. The online version at the main page seemed a bit more condensed and pointing out the more important stories such as these. The Web-Specific content seemed more to the point in that it’s more about how we’re advancing and trying new things as a university then having a front page news article about a party held in the Student Union. This is likely because mostly students would pick up the paper in that it’s in and around classrooms and halls. Students want to see the fun around the campus and advertisements for good deals on certain items. With the web you never know.

I didn’t see any advertising in the web document compared to the print document. This is likely to be because the web document seems like more of a straight forward way to get the news across without the added advertisements. People are so used to ad’s online that they forget about them. With mostly students picking up the paper it’s easier for them to get suckered in then if you’re going online to see the same paper. The bottom line is more students are likely to pick up the paper at the school itself then search for it and look through the different stories online. The publishers of The Spectrum obviously seem to know that because there isn’t a single advertisement in the online version of the paper. In the print version there are advertisements for different places to eat off campus, hair salon off campus, who’s going to appear at the school as a speaker. It wouldn’t work online the same way as it would work by having the print version of it. The print version of the Spectrum is geared towards students and by having advertisements that reach out to them would be useful. Anyone can search the web, having advertisements for students that go to UB would be a waste of time and money because why put your money into something the students will probably see when you know most will see the paper version, which I why I think we see the advertisements more in the print version. Regarding the Spectrum, with print comes more opportunity.