Greg Davis » Video

Bloggingheads.tv – The Evolution of God

Greg — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:16:29 +0000

Tyler Cowen is on point as usual:

Movie Pick: Frozen River (2008)

Greg — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:16:34 +0000

Frozen River (2008)

Directed and written by Courtney Hunt.

I figured this one was going to be likeable just from the description and fact that it deals with a smuggling situation close to home (eastern Ontario/Quebec) but my expectations were wildly exceeded. Such a focused movie. There was something ironic about the simplicity of the characters contrasted with some complex messages.

Great movie from this director who is by the looks of it making his debut. I also didn’t realize the screenplay was nominated for a best writing Oscar last year. Didn’t know good movies won Oscars anymore.

4.5 stars out of 5.0

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Movielens

Greg — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:26:15 +0000

Rather than post my favorite movie picks manually, I’ve stumbled upon a great tool- Movielens- for rating movies and making movie recommendations. We’ll see if I keep it up but I plan on rating movies I’ve seen and see in the future on this site. The great thing is you can export your ratings to html or RSS.

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YouTube- richarddawkinsdotnet & The Four Horseman

Greg — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:57:03 +0000

Check out richarddawkinsdotnet on YouTube for two full hours of discussion between Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. Good stuff.

FYI you can create your own YouTube RSS feeds by users very easily, just use this url with user richarddawkinsdotnet as an example. Simply replace ‘richarddawkinsdotnet’ with any user’s name on YouTube:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/richarddawkinsdotnet/uploads

Product Placement in Film & TV

Greg — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:41:25 +0000

A student in a first year marketing class I am TA’ing asked an interested question which I did some quick research on: what is the average price paid for product placement in the film industry?

While I wasn’t able to pinpoint an answer I did discover some interesting stuff:

product placement as a whole was worth $4.24 billion (US) in 2005- 80% of which takes place on TV

Companies have been paying $5 million to have their product showcased on The Apprentice

Studios often have larger, package deals with companies to have product placement in more than one movie, and even shared advertising agreements

a 2006 article claimed the average indie movie (that ended up in theatres) was charging in the range of $50k to $250k

a famous film example is E.T.- they charge Reese’s Pieces $1 million which supposedly resulted in an 80% leap in sales (for how long I wonder?)

BMW paid $3 million to have James Bond dump his Aston Martin in a recent movie

Slumdog Millionaire

Remember that movie The Wizard from back in the day? Now that was full on product placement.. the power glove.. super mario 3.. kids must be super vulnerable to that kind of stuff.

Grappling Tournaments

Greg — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:32:38 +0000

2 grappling tournaments so far..

Scored a silver medal at the 2008 North American Grappling Association (NAGA) tournament in New Jersey on April 5th 2008. It was my first grappling tourney. Fun stuff. Only managed to get my first two (of five) fights on tape before running out of memory on my camera:
First Fight
Second Fight

In Fall 2008 I competed in Joslins BJJ tourney closer to home, my first time in a gi (lost my third fight).
First Fight
Second Fight
Third Fight