The Criticism of Unheeded Warnings

The latest coming out of the Mumbai attacks is that the U.S. warned them a month ago that this could happen.

Although I eventually became no fan of the Bush administration for various weaknesses, one of the most unfair lobbed at them was the fact that they were warned of attacks before 9/11 and did nothing.

My argument is...how many warnings are out there? How many times are warnings made and nothing happens? Even in the post-9/11 world. You have to devote resources, every day, to something that may or may not happen. This, of course, plays right into the hands of those who make terrorism their vocation.

I think, just like any other crime, terrorism is something that can never be stamped out completely. It's entirely too random to predict everywhere, every time. The best you can do is stop what you can and punish those responsible. Plus, try to find an economical way to be on the lookout when threats are made. I think if everything in the known universe is implemented, you still will have bad things happen.

By the way, the warnings remind me of this post, in which a friend related to me events on the subway. The day of the Mumbai attacks, "unsubstantiated" threats concerning the NYC subway system were being made.

Let's make something very clear: this is likely something that's in the works whether it's unsubstantiated or not. But the awful truth is that the NYC subway system is vast, and the busiest stations can be accessed by merely finding a below-the-radar, sparsely populated station and riding the train in (or making a transfer). You would need cops, military personnel, secret service, the works to man more than 400 stations, 24/7, and either search everyone or have the most perfect suspicious mind to figure out who's up to no good.

So even if a warning came in tomorrow and all sorts of homeland security descended on the NYC subways, they would have to enforce a massive inconvenience for everyone, something along the lines of closing down the less-frequented stations and making everyone go into the manned stations, causing human gridlock, stuffed trains, serial lateness. The idea would be, "Well, yeah, it's inconvenient, but we saved lives," but it would only be a temporary solution.

I'm just saying...to prevent any kind of crime is difficult and would require lots of resources.

End of an Era

The next two months will be the last two months I live in New York.

The work situation out here is less than ideal for a variety of reasons. But I will be coming back to Nashville in early January.

The hope is to be able to work at my old stomping grounds while also returning to school, and oh yeah, finding open spaces and not having to worry about parking.

I absolutely cannot wait to get back and start a new chapter.

Month Twenty-Nine

So, an interesting opportunity arose this past week: I will be working at the Hamptons Film Festival this upcoming Wednesday through Monday. Hopefully I'll run into a hot celebrity and we'll be re-enacting Notting Hill. I'm looking at you, Anne Hathaway.

This will be my first trip into Long Island, which is kind of strange considering I've been here for more than two years. I have considered going to an Islanders game but I just never got around to it.

The film festival circuit is representative, somewhat, of the ever-dwindling use of 35mm film that will become more of a reality in the next two years. I say "somewhat" because most of the reason stuff is digital at film festivals now is that there are so many "shorts" and budget flicks made that are not converted into prints, which are costly. There will be very few prints to build at this festival, enough that they need help, but most stuff is digital.

The studios and a conglomerate of theatre chains have reached an agreement as to who would pay for the digital projector rollout on half the screens in the US and Canada, which was the major sticking point for so many months.

Even the independents should be getting a deal soon as well, so everything you see in the next two years and beyond are going to be straight digital. A lot of this has to do with the fact that there are 20 or so 3D features coming out through 2010. With so few theatres being digital, those films don't have as much of a chance to make bank as their 35mm brethren. On a per-screen average basis, a digital "print" always beats its 35mm counterpart.

I also wouldn't underestimate the power of James Cameron's 3D technological extravaganza Avatar coming out in December of 2009, some 12 years after he made his last feature, Titanic. There is a good chance that Cameron's movie will be so amazing, so "new," that the theatres knew they had to get these projectors installed soon. It goes to show how the technology is advancing: even the Star Wars prequels couldn't get this ball rolling back in 1999, and George Lucas wanted the movies to be shown in digital. It would have required theatres to invest in a technology that was largely unproven, with no other movies on the horizon that could take advantage of a digital medium.

Since then, there have been a lot of Disney cartoons and such that showed the power of the medium, and the money they made, obviously, made 3D digital a viable option over the past 10 years.

I'd also like to pat myself on the back for being very prescient on this rollout. I was saying years ago that the rollout wouldn't occur until 2010 and it looks like I'm going to be correct for the most part. 2009 will be a huge advance, and 2010 should be the rest of it.

Of course, we have to hope the economy rebounds, because a lot of this contract has to do with insurance and banks, which you might have run across in the news lately.

So, that's the future I face in the next few months. More updates later.