Hacker Cinema
Skyfall
2012 · Film · 143 min
Part of James Bond Collection
Directed by Sam Mendes
When Bond's latest assignment goes gravely wrong, agents around the world are exposed and MI6 headquarters is attacked. While M faces challenges to her authority and position from Gareth Mallory, the new Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, it's up to Bond, aided only by field agent Eve, to locate the mastermind behind the attack.
13 positive4 negative23 neutralfrom 40 commenters
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43 comments on Hacker News
The Daniel Craig Bond movies were a pretty significant reinvention, much welcomed and generally pretty good, with the highs much higher than the lows were low. I don't think it's fair or accurate at all to say that Casino Royale, Skyfall, or even No Time To Die were of a piece with the 60s movies in tone or style.
I have a cli tool I maintain that finds visually similar images.
As a fun experiment several years ago I extracted all the frames of Skyfall and all the frames of the first Harry Potter movie.
I then reconstructed Harry Potter frame by frame using the corresponding frame from Skyfall that was most visually similar.
The end result was far more indecipherable than I'd ever expected. The much darker color pallet of Harry Potter lead to the final result largely using frames from a single dark scene in Skyfall, with single frames often being used over and over. It was pretty disappointing given it took hours and hours to process.
Thinking about it now, there's probably a way to compensate for this. Some sort of overall pallette compensation.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
There's a trilogy of movie fight compilations set to music that was on youtube until it was removed for copyright. Your comment about Bourne vs Bond and how they use the scenery is illustrated in some very cool action shots, especially one where a camera follows Bourne as he jumps from a building into a window to catch up with an assailant. The first is now here: https://vimeo.com/68656656
I think action can be made much more interesting by a good visual director moving the viewpoint, balancing the view of the action against quick cuts or angles to serve the needs of the special effects and stunt people. There's a silhouetted scene in Bond's Skyfall where the colours and viewpoint are far more artistic, without detracting from the impact of the fight.
(Die Hard With a Vengeance, the 3rd one, is better than the 2nd, I feel)
Same, in Skyfall he is quite a complex character who fails in numerous ways.
It’s actually a good movie because he is flawed, at least in my opinion.
I personally like the older bonds for the travel scenery, stunts, music girls and cars. The character is somewhat annoying although the cheesy comedy can be fun some times. I love the ski scenes in some of the movies too.
The two co-writers on No Time to Die that you keep praising were the people responsible for such trash as Johnny English, Die Another Day and The World is Not Enough, which says pretty much all you need to know about their screenwriting "skills" and their contribution to Bond history.
For all of the Craig Bond films, other writers had to be brought into to make their scripts filmable (Oscar winners Paul Haggis for Casino Royale and QoS and John Logan for Skyfall and Spectre, Emmy winners PWB and Fukunaga for NTTD).
They didn't bring her in to salvage the script at all. They brought her in to do polishes of dialogue and to give them some ideas about how things could go and they'd take what they wanted. What about this reads salvaging?
The WGA has strict rules about screenwriting credits. If she got screenwriting credit for a major blockbuster, she didn't just "polish" a little bit of the script, she wrote significant portions of the script that made it into production. And given their historical backgrounds, it's clear that she and Fukunaga were responsible for the serious elements of the film, since that's not a capability that Purvis and Wade have demonstrated in any of their prior films.)
except its about lesbian/bisexual bait so it wins awards. in my opinion because they were looking to add female writing credits
And suddenly your agenda becomes clear...Most people aren't so open about being misogynists.
The Bourne Identity, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.
It does not have to be original. And I don't mean only the intro but the entire soundtrack. Often, the theme song is reused over and over during the film with many variations to set the tone of a scene.
Bad movies skimp on soundtracks.
Well UK is a special version of hell when it comes to surveillance. I don't know where this apathy in general population comes from, but to me it signals there is something rotten in the base fabric of their society. Can't be just government act alone, since I haven't noticed any significant pushback from citizens. And its not particularly safe spot either - instead of gun violence, there are frequent stabbings, on top of all other crime of which there is plenty.
And 'they' get smarter too - if you watch Skyfall, one of the better recent Bond movies, there is a nice speech about why MI 6 needs more and more surveillance, powers and budget in front of government officials, because of boogeymen and so on. Of course the whole meeting is attacked by the main adversary. Its exactly kind of glorifying speech that CIA (or FBI, army, air force etc.) likes to sneak to Hollywood movies to purport the image of good guys fighting to save democracy and little children (when we know thanx to Snowden how things look like in real life). Hollywood in exchange at least gets access to special places like aircraft carriers or military bases, not sure what they got in UK, maybe just extra budget.
Cyberwar is almost entirely made up by Hollywood and the media. Funny how people take it seriously.
Also, contrary to what you saw in the Bond film "Skyfall," cyanide doesn't melt your face.
Hah, nice "Skyfall" mode (presumably inspired by one "tactical" screen in that James Bond movie)
Skyfall was great in that it grounded the relationships that Bond had with M. I believe he/she is just as interesting a character as Bond is... but never fully developed. I always thought if John Le Carré was writing Bond the focus would be on M, and might even make for a better book. Skyfall been the only recent movie that has added something meaningful to the Bond persona IMHO.
How did you feel about Skyfall? I'm not a big Bond (or even action movie) fan and I didn't like Quantum of Solace, but Skyfall is one of my favorite films just on cinematography alone. I certainly don't find it to be just a random action movie (or if it is, I need to find which action movies are that visually stunning!)
If by "they" you mean big-studio Hollywood, then there've been about 1500 of those movies in the last 15 years. There are another 600-700 or so non-major-studio films that see a wide release per year, which I think includes foreign films with US distribution, but also US productions outside the major studios.
Yes, at least a few of those 1500 major Hollywood studio movies are quite good.
Looking at the last few years of MGM's output, Creed and The Cabin in the Woods were both good. I didn't like Skyfall but mine seems to be a minority opinion, and AFAIK it's considered one of the best Bond movies by many people (for whatever that's worth). Stretching back closer to the 15-year mark... The Mist is pretty good. Casino Royale sneaks in right at the 15 year mark, and it's really well-regarded.
You might enjoy this analysis of Skyfall, which talks a bit about the choice of the poem:
http://filmreadings.com/2015/12/23/skyfall/
"The authoritarian tendencies of the agency are also underlined by the film’s portrayal of MI6 as a monarchical structure, where M rules as the flesh-eating “king rat” from Silva’s parable. Through such small touches as her flag-draped coffins or the recurring tune of “God Save the Queen” which plays to her grim skull-visage, M is repeatedly surrounded by iconography suggestive of her role as a murderous Queen. The connection is also reinforced by her lengthy quote from Tennyson’s Ulysses midway through the film. For although the poem in question is often read as commenting on Bond or the aging 007 franchise, it is on a deeper level the interior monologue of an aging monarch, and serves both as a comment on M’s weakening grasp on power, as well as her outright rejection of the principle of democratic oversight:"
I feel Skyfall is the movie that proves Bond is a Time Lord.
I think everyone likes the bond they grew up with but I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that Craig is the best actor to play the role.
Skyfall is still alarmingly good, i.e. it's a bond film with explosions and car chases that also has real thematic depth and absolutely beautiful cinematography.
Similar offline versus online privacy thing for music recognition.
My Pixel is sat here charging. Billie Eilish is singing in the background, by the time she sings "I should have known..." it has recognised the music and passively displayed "No Time To Die by Billie Eilish" on the lock screen.
Google's team were building an ML model for music recognition and they realised oh - the smallest model fits on a phone. We don't need to spin this up as a cloud service we can just deliver it to the phones of people who want it as a feature. "Now your phone can tell you what that music is".
Of course down the road this awareness of context allows even cleverer agent interaction. "Which Bond was that?" you ask as Adele sings "Skyfall". "In the movie Skyfall, James Bond was played by Daniel Craig".
I think it's a common thing in TV/cinema. The villain in Skyfall looked similar to Julian Assange. The villain in Tomorrow Never Dies was pretty much Steve Jobs.
Here's one of the better compilations I've found:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hollywood-movies-in-china-2016-10/
I'm not an expert on this, but I think the China-set scenes are generally included in the U.S. theatrical cut, Skyfall's sniper fight in Shanghai being an example [0]. I did a little more Googling and found there were a few examples of scenes meant only for China and left out of the U.S. release. Iron Man 3 apparently had 4 more minutes in which Dr. Wu gets some time to hawk Chinese products [1]. Apparently, some notable Chinese bloggers/moviegoers didn't like the obvious shilling [2].
There are far more examples of things being cut out than being added. In Skyfall's Shanghai scene for example, Chinese censors apparently didn't like the bit where Bond kills a security guard. The listed reasoning for the cuts are heavy-handed to the point of amusement, e.g. ""Mission: Impossible 3" dropped a shot of clothes on clotheslines in Shanghai for the Chinese cut. Apparently, the lack of dryer ownership is a sensitive issue." [2]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMW4dN5sGb0
[1] https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39m85puOQok
[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/how-chinas-censors-influence-hollywood
edit: Apparently Looper, which changed one of its locales from Paris to Shanghai, has extra scenes for Chinese audiences:
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y
Modern blockbuster movies are already plagued with hectic editing and an overabundance of excuses-for-people-to-be-making-a-helicopter-landing. But some of the Chinese scenes/collaboration have worked out nicely. I can't be the only American ignorant of Chinese cityscapes. The Shanghai scene in "Skyfall" was one of the most movie's visually memorable images. Maybe "Pacific Rim"'s latter half would have taken place in Hong Kong without concern about the Chinese market (its title is Pacific Rim, after all, and a movie about robots beating monsters has a lot of freedom to be in contrived places). But apparently its popularity at the Chinese box office helped pave the way for a sequel, despite its disappointing receipts in the U.S. https://qz.com/110683/pacific-rim-trashed-hong-kong-but-won-over-china-with-a-record-opening-day/
Oy, I just imagined watching Skyfall where every time a product appears on screen, #ad appears in the corner.
I have no problem agreeing that paid Instagram posts should say #ad in the image, but I think doing the same thing in a movie is going too far. I can't really defend that though.
> For example, after the James Bond movie "Skyfall", in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.
And would that have been a bad thing? Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?
> But that doesn't mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.
Why not? What's so great about advertising that it's OK to give it free reign to play around with human psychology and influence peoples' behavior without them even being aware of it?
The problem with finding someone to like your product is that it's much more efficient to get support from people who don't like your product but are popular, then it is get support from people who like your product, but don't reach a large audience. Business-wise, it's smarter to attempt the former than the latter.
>Audiences "have a very visceral reaction to '#ad' or '#spon' or whatever it is, where they don't want to know people are getting paid for stuff even if they are."
This is the biggest issue marketers have with those who are advertising their products. Even though you can logically assume that a person you follow is sponsoring products, it is more appalling to the consumer when a sponsorship is labeled with #ad, or the likes.
If everyone was truly a self-aware consumer who knew they were being manipulated, this wouldn't be a huge issue. But the fact is that the majority of people will respond much better to subtle advertisements, then ads that label themselves as an advertisement, which most people are conditioned to ignore or dislike.
For example, after the James Bond movie "Skyfall", in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.
As for the question "Is it an advertisement?" of course it's an advertisement. But that doesn't mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.
With the exception of Star Wars: The Force Awaken, I haven't seen any of the blockbusters mentioned, though I wonder how much this article cherry-picks, given that the 2 top grossing movies this year (Civil War, Zootopia) [0] seem dialogue-dense based on their trailers despite being summer entertainment. Also, I would have attributed the disappearing of dialogue to our increasingly dumbed-down short attention spans, something that has been evident in Jerry Bruckheimer films. Also, Avatar, which had such shit dialogue that I found it hard to believe until I looked it up that James Cameron had written the screenplay for his Aliens, which has timeless (if brief) dialogue.
That said, it's completely believable to me that the cost of making universally clever dialogue is much harder than just doing it in one language, and will be the easiest line-item to justify cutting with international audiences being increasingly prized. I've always been OK with reading subtitles but it wasn't until Inglourious Basterds did I realize how jarring and unusual it is to have foreign languages hold equal screentime to your own native language (which makes me respect IB even more for its artistic achievement).
It'll definitely be a shame if plots themselves become increasingly dumbed down for international reasons. One thing the OP didn't mention in terms of the Chinese-market effect on Americans is the seemingly higher frequency of Chinese locales making cameos...though this is something I welcome, as the Chinese-based set pieces in movies such as Skyfall as Pacific Rim have usually been spectacular.
It is a cheeky reference to the theme song to the movie Skyfall by Adele.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyfall_%28song%29
The latest Bond film is actually pretty interesting. And at risk of plugging my own writing, anyone interested in actual film analysis could do worse than check out this essay on the Skyfall, which nailed the major themes in Spectre two years in advance:
"The hostility of authoritarian political systems to individual autonomy (democratic government in aggregate) is thus one of the ongoing themes of the film...."
https://popupchinese.com/skyfall.html
The short version of Spectre is that Mendes is doing the same thing he did in Skyfall, casting M16 as the villain of the film and using literary motifs and allegorical doubling (i.e. villains reflecting aspects of Bond himself) to suggest that it is the security state itself that the real villain in the film. The interesting thing is the way he engineers a happy ending by transforming the "license to kill" into a "licence not to kill", essentially changing Bond from the agent of death he is shown to be at the beginning of the film into a pro-democratic figure who abandons violence and in doing so gets the girl and what she thematically represents.
This is a classic example of "consider the source". It is poorly researched and has some outright falsehoods:
1) "Even though smart guns are widely available overseas..." Really? I'm unable to find a single production centerfire handgun approved for import by Obama's ATF from anywhere in the world. For example, see the references in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_gun
The lone handgun of any kind with any such a claimed "smart" implementation is the iP1. But what the article conveniently omits (like the similar NYT article from last year omits) is that it is a .22 rimfire cartridge - totally unusable in a police context. There isn't a single law enforcement organization (LEO) in the nation that uses ,22 rimfire as its primary duty weapon.
2) "The palm-reading biometric gun that James Bond used in Skyfall represents the sexiest version..." that is a movie prop, not a production firearm.
MJ is seeking to mandate something that doesn't exist... which plays right into NRA claims that such a law is just disguised prohibition.
So, let's say such a handgun exists, in an appropriate caliber. What is the immediate, obvious market? Law enforcement organizations. After all, deaths due to perps gaining an officer's gun, or fear that such is imminent, results in numerous shootings and deaths: e.g.: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lapd-shooting-20150302-story.html http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/michael-brown-autopsy-teen-ferguson-gun-report-article-1.1982854 http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/10/cops_gun_stolen_from_hoover_ba.html http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-01-08/news/9701070463_1_officer-s-gun-sunrise-police-lauderhill-police http://www.kgw.com/story/news/local/vancouver/2015/09/14/officer-involved-shooting-clark-county/72262324/ http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/police-kill-unarmed-burglar-thief-gun-officials-article-1.852145 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Kathryn_Steinle etc.
Yet no LEOs, including Obama's own ATF, FBI, Secret Service, Border Patrol, nor any branch of the U.S. military has manifested any interest whatsoever in even testing such handguns.
LEOs are the obvious proving ground for such a technology, if it is in fact mature, safe, and reliable.
For anyone who is confused, compto35 is referencing this chilling monologue from the James Bond film "Skyfall"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0dFsAtAlEo
So far I remember only one movie that shows "hacking" plausibly: Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [1].
Most of the time in other hollywood films, it's downright bogus. [2]
[1] http://oracle-wtf.blogspot.ru/2012/05/girl-with-ansi-tattoo.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aApTVqeGJMw Hacking scene from Skyfall, ugh.
> Recent films have started focusing more on the roller coster ride of the visuals, and will do any distortion of the story necessary to motivate a visceral impact on the audience. Good storytelling takes a second seat to putting the audience into the most intense situations possible.
I thought that all of the movies listed (Star Trek Into Darkness, Battleship, The Dark Knight, The Avengers, Skyfall, Star Trek Into Darkness, Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion, 21 Jump Street, Fast & Furious 6) had awful plots, but for some of those movies the visual spectacle made them tolerable.
None of the movies listed (well, I haven't seen 21 Jump Street) obeyed the rules of physics, which is a huge turn-off for me because it breaks the suspense. The best suspenseful movies they tease you into thinking that you can predict what is going to happen next, as if they were a puzzle.
I'm not saying that I don't enjoy every movie that can't be taken literally; I just don't like movies that are logically inconsistent. Star Wars doesn't follow the rules of physics, but at least it does so consistently; you understand the capabilities of the technologies that they use and can reason about how the characters might use them. I find movies that violate the rules of physics inconsistently to be intolerable; if you don't know what behavior characters are capable of, you lose your sense of immersion because you can't relate to the characters, and can't predict what they are going to do at all.
That's just my opinion, though, and obviously enough people don't agree with me because those movies (listed in article) made lots of money.
You're right. From wikipedia "In the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, the island served as an inspiration for the lair of villain Raoul Silva but filming did not take place on the island itself. One section was recreated at Pinewood Studios in Great Britain and the rest via CGI"
http://www.theworld.org/2012/11/the-history-of-hashima-the-island-in-bond-film-skyfall/
Ha! This picture [1] of Hashima Island instantly reminded me of the James Bond film Skyfall. Apparently it served as an inspiration.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%E8%BB%8D%E8%89%A6%E5%B3%B6_%284%29.JPG
All due to piracy? If you look at the 10 top grossing films of 2012, we have: 3 comic book movies (The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spiderman) where the characters have already had several movies, 3 movies that are either the 3rd or 4th in an original series (Madagascar, Ice Age, and MiB), and 4 based on books (Twilight, Skyfall, The Hobbit, and Hunger Games). Maybe people are tired of rehashes of the same IP over and over again, especially when they spread one story over several movies, just to get more money out of you? (I'm looking at you, The Hobbit)
This year seems to be the year of really really brilliant cinematography.
Skyfall was breathtakingly beautiful in terms of cinematography. It had a solid story too, unlike Prometheus, which while beautiful, falls short on story.
The Dark Knight Rises concludes the series very well. It was well shot, and barring a few continuity issues, it was by all means a very good movie.
Argo was fine as a story, also very well made and I liked it.
One surprise this year which I absolutely loved was Pitch Perfect. My partner had dragged me into an early viewing of the movie, and I didn't know much about it. So yeah, good surprise.
As for the rest, meh. I mean Spiderman and Avengers were fun, but it is not as memorable as the ones I mentioned above. So was Looper
The Dark Night Rises and Skyfall are the two standout movies of the year. I haven't seen The Hobbit yet, but I presume that this would also make the year's short list.
These are some of the movies that I watched and liked in 2012:
The Grey
Prometheus
The Avengers
The Dark Knight Rises
Skyfall
The Hobbit
And these are some of the good ones I would like to watch:
Argo
Lincoln
Looper
Life of Pi
Zero Dark Thirty
I do think that most hacking scenes in movies\tv shows and the language used in them is generally terrible. I'm not sure that hacking will ever make interesting viewing for the masses.
That said, I did like the futuristic looking GUI's actually. I didn't think they were completely rediculous but still looked pretty cool, I mean, the audience need something to look at. A man talking nonsense about polymorphic obfuscation probably isn't enough on its own.
Is it possible to even make GUI's like the ones in Skyfall and slap them on real applications? Can WPF make things look that good? I'd be interested to know what tools are needed to build GUI's that look like that.
Blogspam.
Original english article with photos: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20121107-voxeljet-builds-aston-martin-models-for-james-bond-film-skyfall.html
Sourced from original german article:
http://www.voxeljet.de/news-und-events/news/james-bond-skyfall/
thanks :) It's all very new tech but a similar setup (rc heli with RED Epic) was used in a couple of aerial shots in Skyfall - the latest James Bond film
> I have the feeling that Craig and Brosnan are just too much.
I know what you mean but I have to say I increasingly hated Brosnan's Bond movies and when he was captured, tortured and then went on in a ridiculous DC-Marvel-esque superhero tech-fight it was over for me - and "Casino Royale" was a MUCH welcome relief after that; really a "back to the roots" but set in a modern world, a modern James Bond with THE classic story. I really liked Daniel Craig's take on the character. Unfortunately then came "Quantum of Solace"; let's hope "Skyfall" will have a better story.
> We don't have to talk about Lazenby and Dalton. Moore and Connery were just perfect.
I could not agree with this more! I never cared much for the movies with Lazenby and Dalton; I hate to say it but they just looked silly.
> In the new Bond film, “Skyfall”, Heineken has paid to ensure the hero only drinks beer.
At least it wasn't Corona. Though that's no Bond.
Thanks for the really useful tool. Great implementation of infinite scrolling too, but perhaps the small footer bar could be fixed in the viewport so we can click the links without more films loading and pushing it down?
This is also a bit off-topic, but what with Skyfall coming out this month, I wanted to watch Casino Royale on my Apple TV - only to find out that none of the James Bond movies are available on iTunes - not to rent, not to purchase. I know there are always issues with licensing and copyrights in the film and TV industry but does anybody know of any specific reasons why one of the most popular creative franchises of all time isn't available from the biggest digital media distributor out there?!