Assembly Bill 1673

The cell phone market is one of the most competitive fields in the United States with a multitude of well-known and relative start up brands that want to compete for your service.
Being that it is so cut throat will little distinctions among brands and phone types the fate of a company can usually be determined by its market and advertising strategy which has in many cases has concentrated on three main things – comedic appeal, phone services/options and price.
Usually in most cases the price is the final lure that attracts the customer into the store hoping to take advantage of the current deal – a current deal that is boldly misleading.
Take for example Mr. Smith who has finally decided on a choice among the swift and quick-closing great-whites of the sales floor and has since moved onto the checkout register cash registered.
Upon receiving his bill Mr. Smith does a double take as the cash registered tells him the price of his purchase is over a third more than he anticipated. He looks over the receipt and points out that the price of the phones purchased is more than the advertised price, prompting the sales clerk to say, “To get the advertised price you have to send in the mail back rebate for all your phones.”
Although Mr. Smith is displeased with having to pay more for a product up front than he originally thought he has already committed himself to the product and will have to take the price with a grain of salt and hopefully remember to send in the mail back rebate. But most importantly Mr. Smith’s confidence in the sales pitch of commercial products has been shattered and has left his wallet lighter than expected.
Scenarios such as this, where customers go into a phone store believing the actual price is less than the one that they’ll actually have to pay may be a thing of the past if the Assembly Bill 1673 by D-Los Angeles Mike Feuer is signed by Governor Schwarzenegger.
If passed the bill would offer the stores the choice of advertising the higher price or “honor the rebate immediately and seek reimbursement themselves.”
Feuer and other state legislatures that are supporting the bill are saying this is “fundamentally a truth-in-advertising bill,” and that “the consumer should pay the advertising bill.”
I say this is just a bunch of hot-air and wasted amount of state legislative time that is purportedly aimed at protecting the precious consumer.
First off when you buy into a promotional gimmick as a consumer you should have already realizedl that the price somehow involves a gimmick and if you don’t, then your easy money anyways and if it wasn’t this is would surely be some other gimmick that you would spend your money on.
Phone sales people depend on this sort of curiosity among customers and with each company doing the same thing the competiion is still even and eventually if the consumer takes the time to file a rebate they too will benefit through this process.
I agree that most people would rather not deal with this sort of run-around but if the customer goes into a sales floor with the intention of buy a phone, chances are that the customer will also leave with one, however, it might not be their intended price.
This rebate thing has been going on for years and in my eyes has become a subtle agreement between customers and sales floors so why waste the time of Mr. Schwarzenegger with some tedious bill that does nothing but drive away business from hard working sales people in the phone business. This is definitely not content blind and should not be passed.

Where to go

There is a vast amount of independent and foreign films in the three stages of production: pre-production, current production and post production. To cull through all the available information on potential and current films can be quite cumbersome as I have found out but there are numerous quality sites that might ease the process of acquiring direct and new information.
The Hollywood reporter has a large breath of information ranging from the business aspect of independent films to the release dates, reviews and budgets of these films as well as large studio based production.
To view information on a particular area just click on the desired sub-heading near the front of the website and cull from there. It’s pretty efficient if you already know what materials you want to view beforehand.
Idiewire.com is a great source if you want to concentrate more on the artist of independent films as well as the locations of future viewings. This website offers in depth detail of and interviews from the director and/or cast and allows you to link to more niche-like genres that act as subcategories of the independent film.
There are many other independent film websites which to head at and to determine your own palette you may wish to venture to the website ww.pbs.org, which offer a good collection of various websites that somehow relate to the independent film topic.
This is the website where I found the two aforementioned sites above and based on your own personal preference you might find something else you like better but for me, if I want to feed my need for independent film news I’m going to the www.hollywoodreporter.com and www.indiewire.com

The First

So this is the first column I am to write under the topics of independent and foreign motion picture films. I have always been an aficionado of films throughout my youth and early-adulthood; however, I have mostly seen mainstream films and a wide range of the immortal classics that were produced way before I was born.

I haven’t until recently (last year) got into the genres of foreign and independent films so bare with my elementary knowledge of these topics through the first couple of blogs.

I am pretty adamant of writing about movies and came to the conclusion that writing about independent and foreign films would be better for me anyways . . . because these are the types of films that breed creativity and are not impeded by the sense of urgency to make a profit over quality.

For this reason they are pure, unfiltered and relevant, and usually are trying to make a political or social-economic point, with a rare chance of gratification and acceptance by the masses for their excellance.

Those exceptions that have managed to bridge the gap from small, isolated pet-project to mainstream acclaim and reverence have been steadily increasing throughout the past decade, with recent foreign films such as “The lives of Others” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” making domestic box office splashes, as well as the all time most profitable film for its total cost, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

Be it censorship, fascism or family customs, each one of these films as well as a long list of others in these topics have a meaning of relevance that cannot be captured in a CGI sequence, palpable explosives, or big-breasted woman.

Yet without these gimmicks that are used to entice a fickle-minded crowd, the influences of foreign and independent films are making a place for themselves amongst the American culture. They continue to present meaning and art in the form of a moving motion picture, but now it seems that the narratives of these films are evolving more to fit the American appetite, and in some cases portraying a well told story better and at a fraction of the price than those that are Hollywood produced – a cachet that may be a recurring theme.