MONSOON Monday, August 11, 2014 • Page 20
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• Editor: Daniel Burkart • arts@wildcat.arizona.edu • (520) 621-3106 YOUR SUMMER GUIDE TO TUCSON MUSIC, MOVIES AND ART
Bitcoin becoming more tangible BY PATRICK O'CONNOR
Arizona Summer Wildcat
San Francisco, Tokyo, Singapore, London, Tucson — what do these cities have in common? They are some of the first cities to have Bitcoin ATMs, a new payment system that has the potential to change the way we handle finances. The first Bitcoin ATM in Arizona opened late July at Bookmans Entertainment Exchange on Ina Road. Bitcoin is known as a crypto-currency. It has no physical form and instead exists entirely online as a virtual currency. If you have bitcoins, then you have a program on your computer known as a wallet. Each wallet has a unique address associated with it to send and receive bitcoins. Much like cash, transactions with Bitcoin are extremely fast, anonymous and permanent. With Bitcoin, you can buy furniture from Overstock.com, computers from Dell, satellite TV from Dish Network, flowers from 1-800-Flowers.com or a flight from airBaltic. Local Tucson businesses are accepting Bitcoin as well. Chaffin’s Diner on Broadway Boulevard will serve you a delicious breakfast in exchange for Bitcoin and you can grab a quick coffee downtown at Cartel Coffee Lab and pay with Bitcoin. Very soon, Bookmans
REBECCA MARIE SASNETT/ARIZONA SUMMER WILDCAT
BOOKMANS ON INA ROAD is the first location in Arizona to start accepting Bitcoin, an online crypto-currency. Bitcoin is a new way to buy items online.
Entertainment Exchange will also accept Bitcoin. “I’ve always liked to use the engine of Bookmans to see where the future goes and hopefully to help it along,” said Bob
Oldfather, owner of Bookmans Entertainment Exchange. Until recently, Bitcoin was very difficult for the average Tucson resident to get a hold of. One avenue was to purchase it online through an exchange, which can take weeks to verify banking information, just like day trading. Now you can walk into Bookmans on Ina Road and easily purchase some. In the near future, Tucson may be hosting even more of these ATMs. “Eventually we’d like to add more ATMs at other locations,” said Brian Williams, owner of Javelin Investments, the company that owns and maintains the Bitcoin ATM. Bitcoin offers great advantages over traditional payment systems. Like cash, giving bitcoins to someone is fast and anonymous, but Bitcoin takes that a step further. Sending twenty dollars to your friend for their birthday would normally take days and you risk it getting lost in the postal system. With Bitcoin, it arrives quickly and securely. It even crosses international borders. Sending money overseas is usually expensive due to high fees, but with Bitcoin you only need to pay a fraction of a cent to have your transaction verified. “Every time I take a credit card there’s a charge, every time I deposit it in the bank, there’s a charge,” Oldfather said.
BITCOIN, 19
Summer movie showdown: Three enter, only one leaves BY ALEX GUYTON
Arizona Summer Wildcat
This week, there is a smorgasbord of films to cover. In lieu of doing a standard review of a single film, these three films — “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle,” (hereby referred to as “TMNT”), “Into the Storm ”and “Boyhood” — which have basically nothing in common, will be pitted against each other in a battle royale. It’s the last gasp of summer — which of these movies will hold its head high heading into the fall, and which will be left to swelter and die in the dog days of Tucson heat?
Heroes
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Megan Fox as April O’Neil in “TMNT.” You may be thinking to yourself, “Now, wait a hot second, shouldn’t the characters that the movie is named after be counted as the heroes?” Well, that’s what you’d hope, since the turtles and their humor are the most enjoyable part of the movie. However, we are with O’Neil, a reporter that’s trying to break out of the leagues of
fluff-piece journalism, from beginning to end. Therefore, Fox is the anchor of the film. If that sounds a little dubious to you, that’s because it is. She does a fair job, honestly, but there are times when she’ll let out a terror-filled scream so fake you can just imagine the director saying “action” a few seconds prior. Ellar Coltrane as Mason in “Boyhood.” For those unfamiliar with the premise of “Boyhood,” director Richard Linklater filmed the fictional life of Mason for a couple of weeks a year over the course of 12 years. The same actors (Lorelei Linklater as sister, Ethan Hawke as father, Patricia Arquette as mother) portrayed Mason and his family, meaning the passage of time was completely organic. A year in actual life was a year in “Boyhood.” While makeup, special effects and different actors always show age in film, there’s something beautiful about Coltrane literally growing up before our eyes. Richard Armitrage as Gary Morris, Sarah Wayne Callies as Allison Stone, Matt Walsh as Pete, Max Deacon as Donnie, Nathan
IFC PRODUCTIONS
Kress as Trey in “Into the Storm.” The politically correct term for this amount of leads is an “ensemble cast,” but the actual correct term for this amount of leads, in the case of this movie, is “unwieldy and forgettable.” Winner: It’s not even close. “Boyhood.”
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