Winning and losing

There’s a television game over here in the UK that’s very popular apparently (one of the many). It’s called Deal or No Deal and involves someone out of a group coming up to the presenter with their numbered box and then trying to guess which of the other boxes holds the big prize. Gradually the boxes are whittled away and often so is the prize money.

There was an elderly guy on it the other night, and his wife was in the audience. She made the mistake at one point of saying, It’s just a game,’ and the presenter picked up on this, and had her on for the rest of the night. The trouble was, she obviously didn’t believe what she said: the worse her husband did, the more her face fell, and when he lost out badly in the end, in spite of repeating her mantra, she was obviously unhappy with his choices.

I’m told that the daughter of a friend of my in-laws has recently been on it too, and when she was offered £20,000 by the Banker (a mysterious personality who never appears, but rings up every so often) she turned it down, hoping for some bigger prize. In the end she wound up with one penny.

Ebert and Berardinelli

Two of the film reviewers I trust in most respects are Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli, whose film reviews nearly always top the list of reviews on IMDB.com.
Occasionally I’ve disagreed substantially with them – for instance, I still think 2001 is a dud of a movie, overlong, and full of its own bombast, while Berardinelli thinks it’s wonderful – but in general I find their reviews are worth reading because they think along the same lines as I do. By that I don’t mean they have to agree with my view, or I have to agree with theirs, but it’s good to know that the way you feel about a movie will find resonance with the way they feel.
I don’t know how long Ebert’s been going – it’s a long time, something like thirty years or more – and Berardinelli has been visible on IMDB pretty much since it started. Berardinelli isn’t a professional reviewer, as far as I’m aware, but he’s obviously well regarded on the site.
While I was looking up the details on What’s Love Got To Do With It? - the biopic of Tina Turner that I caught the last half hour of the other night – in order to find out who played Ike, Turner’s abusive husband (it was Laurence Fishburne and he was very good), I came across Ebert’s latest book: Your Movie Sucks. It sounds like a lot of fun. Here’s what’s on the back cover, apparently:

Roger's review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (0 stars): "The movie created a spot of controversy in February 2005. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture nominees and wrote that they were 'ignored, unloved, and turned down flat by most of the same studios that . . . bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic.'
"Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: 'Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind. . . . Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers.'
"Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks. But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, Ray, The Aviator, Sideways, and Finding Neverland. As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."

I read Ebert’s Awake in the Dark earlier this year. There were some films he loved that I can’t recall thinking were great, but he also made me keen to see a number of films I’ve missed over the years. I’m not sure that Your Movie Sucks would make me want to see too many of the movies mentioned in it, but it sounds like a great read all the same.

In reverse

I wrote about the reverse auction process at bid4prizes.com a couple of months ago, regretting the fact that I couldn’t join in with this system because I don’t live in the right part of the world. Unfortunately nothing has changed on that front, so I’m still missing out on this fun approach to sweepstakes. Well, that’s the way it goes. We can’t all get free gifts on the Internet – at least not through this site! I’ll have to check around and see if anyone else is doing this sort of thing, as it sounds fun, and a number of people who got prizes out of it have left their comments on the site, remarking how surprised they were in each case to win.

It’s probably more of a surprise in a reverse auction than a normal auction, where you have a pretty good idea if you’re going to win. Plus the bonus, with this site, of getting prizes without having to pay anything. I don’t know how this is funded (in fact, it’s a mystery to me how lots of things are funded that include a big cash prize or item prizes, such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) but there don’t appear to be any catches, and that’s what people on the Internet want: no hidden traps!

I miss out again

The problem with not living in the States is that you miss out on some outstanding contests. However, I don’t think I’ll become a US citizen just so I can enter; at present I’m quite happy with my status as an Aussie who lives in NZ.
But it would be fun to go in for the lowest bid contest, which is a kind of inside-out auction. The person opening the bids starts at 1c, and so might several other people – no one knows what anyone else bids. The person who dares to go up to 2c or more, and is the only one to do so, becomes the ‘lowest’ unique bidder. And so it goes on until bidding stops. A further tricky aspect to this is that in spite of bidding in monetary amounts, you don’t actually have to pay anything at the end of the auction, if you’re the winner. And the prizes are real and substantial, from BMWs down to Motorola Razor cellphones. I’ve checked out the prizes a couple of times, and find it hard to choose what I’d most like to win.
There’s a charming young lady called Karen (if I caught her name right) who goes through the whole deal with you on a little video. Worth checking it out. If you live in the States (and the District of Columbia).