Hey, did you see Jobs this weekend? If so, you probably saw it alone, in a theater completely empty except for yourself, a single loquacious cricket, and a theater usher sleeping one off. Why? Because Jobs absolutely tanked this weekend.
This week on The CultCast: Jobs! We’ve seen it, and now the question is — is it any good? We’ll discuss the much-hyped movie (100 percent spoiler-free), Ashton Kutcher’s performance and love for the man, plus examine if the real Jobs fits the fictional portrayal.
Then, an all new Yay & Nay: September 10th edition. We’ll yes and no our way through the rumors and what we expect at the all-but-confirmed Apple iPhone event.
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin. Show notes up next!
Steve Wozniak has made his feelings about Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs movie pretty clear, but how does he really feel about the film? Kutcher believes Woz’s views could be swayed by the fact he’s being paid by another studio to support a different Steve Jobs movie, and because Jobs doesn’t place enough focus on Woz’s contribution to Apple.
It’s not easy making a posthumous movie about the world’s most well-known and beloved control freak. Just ask Joshua Michael Stern, director of new Steve Jobs biopic Jobs. The film delves into the early days of Apple Computer as Stern paints a picture of a man he calls a “brutally honest character.”
Don’t go into the PG-13 Jobs expecting any bombshells about Apple’s late, great maximum leader — you won’t find any. Instead, what you’ll get is a straightforward cinematic take on Jobs’ early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played mostly for comic relief by Josh Gad), a healthy dose of Hollywood-style boardroom intrigue and a few glimpses into Jobs’ personal life. Many of the scenes, whether factually accurate or not, have been woven into the tapestry of tech history. And Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, obviously isn’t around to fact-check the past or exert his famous control over the final product.
“Part of the shackles for me as a director was, we really had to do everything that was sort of public domain, you know, we couldn’t stray too far off of what we basically knew about Steve,” Stern told Cult of Mac during a recent interview at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco. “But the interesting thing about Steve, being such an enigma, there really isn’t that much more to know at all. I mean, everyone knows what they know.”
Look, I’ll be straight with you, I’m not a movie critic. Nope, just an average moviegoer. But I am an Apple fan, and probably, like you, one who greatly admired Steven P. Jobs.
So ever since last Tuesday, when I got to sit through an early screening of Ashton Kutcher’s much-hyped new movie, Jobs, people have been asking me what I think of it. Is this a film that lives up to the buzz? Did Kutcher deliver? Or more often, “Just how bad was it?”
Well…
You might think it’s too soon for a movie about Steve Jobs. After all, the Apple co-founder walked off the world stage just 676 days before Friday’s premiere of Jobs, the movie about him that stars Ashton Kutcher.
I had that same uneasy feeling sitting through the interminable 122-minute Jobs, a PG-13 movie that frequently stalls like a spinning beach ball.
The first major movie about Steve Jobs hits U.S. theaters in less than 24 hours. Reviews have been mixed, but if you’re not interested in plopping down your hard-earned cash to see Ashton doing his best El Jobso impersonation, Open Road Films CEO, Tom Ortenberg, says you’ll be able to watch it all from your couch soon enough.
Never heard of the British Oreo? You will on this week’s CultCast! Of course we’ll also cover the week’s best Apple stories, including what’s new in iOS 7 beta 5; our own Leander Kahney’s new book about Jony Ive; the strange new buzz around the upcoming Jobs movie; plus we pitch our favorite tech and apps in a little segment we call Faves ‘N Raves.
Have a few chortles whilst getting caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.
Show notes up next!
Getting into the psyche of any major historical figure is a difficult task, especially when you’ve never even met them, so to sympathize with Steve Jobs’ dick-ish behavior for his role in JOBS, Ashton Kutchers says he thought of Steve as kind of like a great football coach.
During an appearance on The Colbert Report, Kutcher says he can totally relate to why Steve Jobs berated people, because his high school football coach/uncle used to throw temper tantrums to make the team better too.
Kutcher told Colbert that he also thinks the way Steve sought love and appreciation from people was by obsessing about making perfect products for them, so that kind of justified being an asshole to people.
Here’s the full interview:
To celebrate the upcoming release of Ashton Kutcher’s role in the new JOBS biopic, famed Mac icon designer, Susan Kare, released new 32 x 32 pixel portraits of El Jobso himself and Señor Aplusk.
