The popularity of PSVR

In an article for The New York Times, Nick Bilton reveals the first sales numbers for PSVR (and thus any VR headset) ever publicly released:

The headset, PlayStation VR, has been scarce in many stores, especially in Japan, since it went on sale in October. In an interview at his Silicon Valley office on Friday, Mr. House revealed PlayStation VR’s sales for the first time, saying consumers had purchased 915,000 of the headsets as of Feb. 19, roughly four months after it went on sale.

Sony’s internal goal was to sell one million of the headsets in its first six months, by mid-April. The company will almost certainly surpass that forecast. “You literally have people lining up outside stores when they know stock is being replenished,” said Mr. House, describing the scene in Japan, one of the largest games markets […]

Sony’s primary competitors, Oculus from Facebook and HTC, have not disclosed sales of their premium headsets. One research firm, SuperData Research, estimates there were 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 HTC Vive headsets sold by the end of last year.

Those sales numbers are interesting, and make the PSVR sound much more popular in Japan than here. The lack of a killer app makes me loathe to invest in PSVR. My colleague, Devindra Hardawar, had a pretty good review of the product when it was first released and nothing about it made it seem like a must-buy.

That being said, the fact that I already have a PS4 Pro means PSVR is likely going to be my first VR purchase when the time is right.

What went wrong at the 2017 Oscars ceremony (and other thoughts on the winners)

Tonight’s Oscars ceremony brought, without a doubt, the craziest Oscars moment I’ve ever witnessed in all my life: During the evening’s climax, Warren Beatty opened up the Best Picture winner envelope and handed it to Faye Dunaway, who read off the winner as La La Land. Shortly afterward, it became clear that Moonlight, not La La Land, had actually won Best Picture. What went wrong?

To understand how this happened, it is helpful to understand how the envelope system works. In an article on Medium, the folks from PricewaterhouseCoopers explain:

The producers decide what the order of the awards will be. We each have a full set. I have all 24 envelopes in my briefcase; Martha has all 24 in hers. We stand on opposite sides of the stage, right off-screen, for the entire evening, and we each hand the respective envelope to the presenter. It doesn’t sound very complicated, but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope.

It seems clear that the wrong envelope was handed to Warren Beatty — a duplicate of the Best Actress envelope, which had just been awarded to Emma Stone for La La Land.

Thus, the sequence of events was as follows:

  1. Beatty was handed the wrong envelope — the Best Actress envelope.
  2. He opens it and reads the envelope to himself. He seems to think something is wrong.
  3. Faye Dunaway thinks he’s hamming it up. Beatty hands the envelope to Faye Dunaway and tries to explain what’s going on.
  4. Dunaway just wants to move on with the show so she hastily reads what the card says: La La Land is the winner! (It really says “Emma Stone from La La Land — Best Actress”)
  5. La La Land producers take to the stage, but the group is slowly informed that a mistake has been made.

You can watch a video of the entire incident here. Rebecca Keegan at Vanity Fair has more color around what happened. Matthew Jacobs at HuffPo wrote a fortuitous piece about how Oscar producers handle a mixup like this. Also: Mahershala Ali’s response to this is all class.

Here are a few things I take away from this:

  • Regardless of how big of a mess up this is, we now live in a world where Moonlight, a $1.5MM budgeted film about a gay black man’s struggle to adjust to life in Miami won Best Picture. This is remarkable, and a win for films that have diverse perspectives, not to mention diverse casts/filmmakers behind them.
  • Jordan Horowitz was the producer of La La Land who recognized what happened and immediately took the situation into his own hands. He grabbed the envelope, showed it to the camera, and declared Moonlight the winner. It was the right thing to do. It was the classy thing to do. It’s something that must’ve been challenging to do given the circumstances. Props to him for handling this so well in what must have been a fairly crushing moment for him.
  • There was a bizarre moment when one of the producers of La La Land seemed to know that Moonlight had won but still got in front of the mic to say a few words. “We lost, by the way.” Never heard someone say that at an Oscar thank you speech before.
  • I hope Beatty isn’t remembered negatively for this (even though it seemed to me initially that he was at fault). Now that more facts have come to light, it is clear that he tried to prevent this from happening as best as he could.
  • The design of the cards in the envelopes could use an overhaul. If the hierarchy had been more clear, it’s likely this disaster could’ve been averted.


And some other thoughts on the rest of the ceremony:

  • Overall these awards were…pretty good? I was disappointed in a few categories, like Moana not winning Best Animated Feature, or Kubo or Doctor Strange not winning for Best Visual Effects. But I thought, on the whole, the Academy gave out a bunch of awards to a bunch of deserving films.
  • Damien Chazelle is now the youngest person to win Best Director, at the age of 32. An incredible achievement.
  • Kimmel did a decent job, but the moment where he trolled Matt Damon with the We Bought a Zoo tribute was genius.
  • I thought Kimmel’s attempts to bring his usual bits into the show were very mixed. Having tourists be surprised by the Oscars was cute — it’s easy to forget how mindblowing it is to have all these stars in one place, and seeing “normal people” react to them was a delight. But like many things in the evening, the segment seemed to go on forever. And the “Mean Tweets” video just didn’t seem to really fit with anything else in the night.
  • Emma Stone is an extremely talented individual, but Isabelle Huppert was magnificent in Elle, delivering a performance that was challenging and unique. It was far more interesting than what Stone did in La La Land and I’m bummed the award didn’t go to someone more deserving (this year).
  • “City of Stars” winning Best Original Song is the only award that actively irritated me. Not only was it not the best song among the nominees – it’s not even the best song from La La Land! (I would’ve gone with “Audition” at least. C’mon Academy!)
  • Can we please stop with “the host gives the audience food” bits? They never cease to be painful and take up so much time in a ceremony that already has great difficulty being punctual.

I recorded more detailed thoughts on a Periscope video reacting to the event. What did you think of this year’s Oscars ceremony?

Update: PricewaterhouseCopers has now apologized for the mix-up.

Remembering Bill Paxton

I was super upset this morning to hear of the passing of Bill Paxton.

Paxton was an actor who was memorable in every single role he played. I always found his characters to be relatable and likable, no matter what film he was in, or even what kind of character he was playing.

Aliens. Apollo 13. Titanic. Nightcrawler. True Lies. The man had a ton of range and was a frequent presence in some of my favorite movies of all time.

His directorial debut, Frailty, was a confident, creepy thriller and foretold the McConnaissance. It’s a movie that does not get nearly enough love.

His recent performance in Edge of Tomorrow may not be his best but it is one of my favorite. In it, he plays Master Sergeant Farell, a hardass who whips Tom Cruise’s character into shape and delivers harsh pronouncements with style:

The good news is there’s hope for you private. Hope in the form of glorious combat. Battle is the Great Redeemer. It is the fiery crucible in which true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in.

No one could deliver a monologue quite like him.

RIP Bill Paxton. You brought joy to a lot of people.

The stakes of this year’s Oscars

David Cox, writing for The Guardian:

It is easy to see why the Academy’s voters have embraced La La Land. Many of them will have followed a path all too similar to Seb and Mia’s. Seeing their life-choices vindicated by the witchcraft of their trade must have been something of a comfort. All the same, the best picture winners that stick in the memory, such as Schindler’s List, Gandhi, Chariots of Fire and Titanic, tend to extol humanity’s better nature, not its shortcomings.

This time round there are also films among La La Land’s doomed rivals that could make us proud of our species. Moonlight deals with love. Manchester by the Sea offers contrition. Arrival honours inquiry. Hacksaw Ridge celebrates selflessness. Any of these would be a worthier winner than Damien Chazelle’s tawdry and dispiriting confection. La La Land’s victory on Sunday night will tell us something about our era. But it will be no triumph for film-makers, filmgoers or film.

Amrou Al-Kadhi, writing for The Independent:

I’m now 26, and in my career, I’ve been sent nearing 30 scripts for which I’ve been asked to play terrorists on screen. Roles have varied from ones as meaty as “Suspicious Bearded Man on Tube” to “Muslim man who hides his bombs in a deceptive burka” […]

Stories onscreen have the rare ability to arouse empathy for diverse characters in audiences across the world, so leaving out Arab and Muslim voices in such a context of global Islamophobia is particularly damaging. With masterful directors, sublime works like Moonlight happen; now the story of gay black masculinity in the Miami ghetto has become that much more relatable and mainstream. It is my genuine belief that if the TV and film industry had been more diligent in representing Arab characters – with all our humane, complex, intersectional three-dimensionality – xenophobia would not be as pandemic as it is today.

And hence I pray that La La Land doesn’t clean up at the Oscars (as at the BAFTAs). For this would be a sign that the industry prioritises the celebration of itself first of all, self-indulgently rejoicing in its own nostalgic – and white – mythology.

As I touched on in this week’s Gen Pop, many aspects of life seem to have become proxies for other battles our culture is currently engaging in. Some people look at the Oscars race between Moonlight and La La Land and see an epic conflict between celebrating diversity and celebrating whiteness. In reality, those films are the end products of two passionate filmmakers who just wanted to tell their stories.

Thus, I’m not sure how much significance to place on who wins Best Picture this year. It’s the product of so many different variables, some of them unknowable and uncontrollable. At the same time, I can’t begrudge Al-Kadhi his own reaction; if I’d been subjected to the same treatment as him during his career, I might have a lot of hope in Moonlight this weekend too.

Twitter Thread of the Day: Anand Giridharadas on Kansas hate crime

I spend a lot of time on Twitter and I see tons of amazing dialogue and reflections. Twitter Thread of the Day is a feature on my blog where I’ll try to share one thread that was particularly interesting, smart, moving, or impactful for me. Go here to read previous editions. 

Today’s TTOTD comes from Anand Giridharadas, who writes about the shooting of Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani in Kansas. The attack seems like a clear example of a hate crime, fueled by the current political climate that’s awash in anti-immigrant sentiment. Giridharadas explains how this happened.

[Note: If you’re ever featured here and don’t want to be, feel free to get in touch with me via email at davechen(AT)davechen(DOT)net]

The Washington Post’s new slogan

The Washington Post’s new slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It’s fitting, punchy, and alliterative. And it could’ve been so much worse.

In an article in their style section, Paul Farhi reveals some of the rejected options:

The group brainstormed more than 500 would-be slogans. The choices ranged from the heroic (“Dauntless Defenders of the Truth”) to the clunky (“American democracy lives down the street. No one keeps closer watch.”) to the Zen-like (“Yes. Know.”).

The group ultimately ended up where it started — with “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Note: apparently coming up with a new slogan is now a good way to generate a lot of media coverage (including one’s own).