Various and Sundry

The Surprising Profit Center for Airlines

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Continuing my trend of learning more about how certain industries actually work (see the McDonald’s article or film distribution video from previous weeks), I stumbled across this ‘explainer’ video about how airlines have changed their profit priority: it’s no longer focused on flying planes. Now, I’m sure some people already knew this, just as many people know that, historically, movie theaters make more money on concessions than on the movie tickets themselves. But I’m just…

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Various and Sundry

Hacking Your Personality in the Pursuit of Happiness

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

So, a couple weeks ago, I posted a link to some deep thoughts: guideposts for how to live your life. It was all part of a series of posts I’ve been doing this January exploring the whole notion of New Year’s resolutions writ large. So why not continue? The article that piqued my interest in this case was an article by Christian Jarrett for the BBC. A TL;DR summary of the article might be “everyone…

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Acting Producing Writing

Passion Counts: Patton Oswalt Edition

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Lest any of you think I’m going to populate the blog with repeatedly grim tales of people being sucky (as I have for a couple Wednesdays and this morning), I just wanted to highlight the Patton Oswalt interview I linked in last week’s post about film distribution. Really, if you are at all interested in his career or perspective on things (he is a tremendous film geek in addition to his other geekdoms), the hour…

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Producing

Lies, Damn Lies, and Hollywood Accounting

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Last Wednesday’s post about how some film distributors led to some discussion amongst friends on the Interwebs and elsewhere. One colleague who’s been a filmmaker and exhibitor pointed out how there are so many sticky problems with film distribution, it’s a difficult problem to handle — and there are definitely some issues with some of the smaller distributors. However, that made me think of how the major distributors engage in creative accounting that’s about as…

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Various and Sundry

Moon Knight: For when you might have to get a little bit crazy…

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

The comic collecting of my youth was dominated by some of the less popular titles (e.g. Rom), including some that came and went in various volumes of subsequent comic book series (e.g. Alien Legion) — what nowadays we might call “reboots” One of my favorite examples of this was Moon Knight, because every new comic series of the character seemed to focus on different aspects of the mercenary-turned-“Fist of Khonshu.” However, one of the most…

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Rants Various and Sundry

Da Vinci: Code for “Meh”

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I had another post slated for today, but, I figured I’d be a bit more timely, considering the video above came out this past Sunday. John Oliver can lambaste and rant with the best of them, and his snark regarding the pop culture phenomenon of The Da Vinci Code speaks to me. Why? Because I was convinced by a number of very energetic people to go forth and read now –right now– The Da Vinci…

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Producing

The New Paradigm of Film Distributors Really Not Caring About Their Films

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

If you read last Wednesday’s post about standardization of suck that is the McDonald’s ice cream machine, you hopefully felt a little irritation — assuming you believe in truth, justice, and lovely intangibles. Well, alas, I have more fuel for the ire fire, which I have a special interest due to my connection to filmmaking and knowing many a fellow indie producer who is either in this position or about to be. Now, if you’re…

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Various and Sundry

Resolve to Reframe Your Worldview

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Last Monday, I posted about lots of little things to add some joy or satisfaction to your day-to-day life. So from the micro to the macro, here’s a few overarching goals you might want to take on for this new year… or for the rest of your life in general. Bear in mind, this list from Maria Popova for The Marginalian gets pretty heavy, but if you’re in the headspace where you’re thinking about how…

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Various and Sundry

A Cold War that’ll Give You an Ice Cream Headache

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Running contrary to the New Year’s notion of doing better for several years running is the McDonald’s Ice Cream machine, a notoriously finicky piece of equipment that has its own online dashboard of failure. And if the efficiency experts in your life don’t gnash their teeth at that, they likely will when they read Andy Greenberg’s article in Wired. It’s really infuriating to see miserable experiences be standardized, but to see the lengths to which…

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