9.24.2006

Two Coast Guard Divers Die

As tragic as this story is, all I could think is this seems like it should be the beginning to some thriller/adventure movie or some horror movie.

Things To Do

Build a wooden kayak in Maine.

Take the Dogfish 360 Experience.

Travel the Bourbon Trail.

I am sure this list will grow as we find new things to add to it. And some point we need to just go and do these things. The biggest omissions I can see right now are no diving trips and no fishing trips. But hey, we got beer, bourbon, and building on there right now.

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9.23.2006

Saturday Night Report/Open Mic

Well since The Engine isn't doing an Open Mic night tonight, I figured I would do my own tonight here on my blog.

Hanging out with the Reeds drinking margaritas and eating snacks. Probably switch to rum or tequila over ice in a little while.

Today we went to the grand re-opening and birthday celebration of Broccato's. When I saw the store after the storm, I thought it would never re-open. It was worth the hour wait to get lemon ice and some gelatto.

Angie and I went to see The Illusionist last night and I really, really enjoyed it; but what the fuck was up with all the teeny boppers there?

Going to work for The Best Damn Sports Show Period next week. Well for Tuesday - Friday at least. I will basically be doing stage crew setting up for bands which are going to be playing on the show. Someone tell me where all this film production is that I keep hearing about on the news?

Anyway, that is my Saturday night. Oh yeah, my TV in the bedroom has decided having a picture is not a good thing. Guess I won't be watching any movies on my nice large TV tonight.

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9.21.2006

Shoot 'em Up Teaser

The Tempest: Prospero's Epilogue

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Books in 2006, Shakespeare

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages
Strip Tease
Stormy Weather
A Princess of Mars
A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
The Tempest


There will be much reading of criticism to go along with the play. Screenplay is beginning. Not as easy as it sounds to adapt Shakespeare into a screenplay.

9.20.2006

Sorkin Quote/Thing

There is a line in the original script for the Studio 60 pilot which Sorkin also used in the West Wing I believe:

"When did it become bad to be the elite?"

I just love that line. I love the idea behind it. The idea that being intelligent and the best at what you do has become a bad thing in our country. We praise mediocrity from the President down to kids in school.

The lazy or stupid ones are the ones who are given the breaks. They are the ones we push forward now. Instead of pandering to those who are the most accomplished or the most gifted, we vilify them and say what they want doesn't matter and isn't what the rest of society should have.

It is one thing for everyone to be equal in the eyes of the law, it is another thing for everyone to be forced into being the same or for those who have excelled or have natural advantages to be told, sorry, your progress has to be slowed down because you are better than the rest.

There is nothing wrong with being the best at what you do. There is nothing wrong with being intelligent and being able to think.

Sorkin had another piece in West Wing about raising the level of debate in the country. I wish we had leaders like that. Instead we get leaders who twist language around to mean nothing anymore. We have leaders on both sides who don't have the guts to say what they mean and stand by it.

Maybe more on this later. Maybe not.

You know My Name

today

Coffee is very, very good. Lack of sleep the last two nights is not so good. Knowing that tonight begins many nights of lack of sleep is really not helping anything since I will be up late starting tonight to work on The Tempest (late night/very early morning being the only real time I can write).

Got Josh Rouse playing while I do my morning reading. Really, I don't need to open up the paper first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning I open up my laptop. I get my comics, my news, my readings. The paper is still good for me though since I get most of my local news from there, but it is not what I reach for first thing. Of course, this would all go quicker if I had a high speed connection (need to get a new gig so I can do that).

Good news for everyone, I found the article from Sports Illustrated on the 1963 Mississippi State basketball team. That will be the next thing to adapt into a screenplay after The Tempest. For that one I have several sources, and I will hopefully be getting more sources for it from the archives at the MSU library.

Alright, enough rambling for now. I figured everyone else I saw was giving an update of what was up with them, I would do the same. Still no job, yet I keep hearing how the film industry is coming back and bringing all these jobs. Might be time for yet another career change since it has been way too long since I last worked.

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9.19.2006

2006 MacArthur Fellows

Once again, I was not named a recipient:

Nurturing Creativity: 2006 MacArthur Fellows

They range from stem cell biologist to country doctor to deep-sea explorer to jazz violinist to sculptor. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to be significant contributors in their fields. Each of the 25 MacArthur Fellows named today received a phone call from the Foundation informing them that they will be given $500,000 with no strings attached.

MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations or reporting requirements, offering the opportunity for Fellows to accelerate their current activities or take their work in new directions. The unusual level of independence afforded to Fellows underscores the spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors. Fellowships are awarded to women and men of all ages and at all career stages, illustrating concretely that extraordinary creativity knows no boundaries and is not constrained by time, place and endeavor.

“Selection for a MacArthur Fellowship is the culmination of an intensive review of the creative efforts and promise of each Fellow,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. “Fellows receive the gift of time and an unfettered opportunity to reflect, explore, and create. Talented and creative individuals, free to follow their insights and instincts, will reveal new discoveries and make a difference in shaping our future.”

9.18.2006

Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip

Well, I am sold on that. Really, Aaron Sorkin's writing is light years ahead of most everyone on TV which is why even when it isn't clicking or isn't perfect, it (the writing) still feels so much better than what we as viewers are used to (and I think it is why the actors are so much better on his shows than they are on most other programs).

Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip isn't perfect, but it is a damn nice return for fans of good writing and intelligent television, which sadly is far and few between. And, if more people turn in for the laugh riot of CSI:Miami I will know the human race deserves everything which happens to it, namely bad shit.

The opening Network inspired monologue is just one of the many greta parts of the show, but it is also probably the best statement of what Sorking is trying to do:

This isn't gonna be a very good show tonight and I think you show change the channel.

You should change the channel right now, or better yet turn off the TV.

No, I know it seems like this is supposed to be funny, but tomorrow you're gonna find out it wasn't and I'll have been fired by then. This isn't supposed--this isn't a sketch.

This show used to be cutting edge political and social satire, but it's gotten lobotomized by a candy-ass broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience.

We were about to do a sketch you've already seen 500 times. Yes, no one's gonna confuse George Bush with George Plimpton, we get it. We're all being lobotomized by the country's most influential industry which has thrown in the towel on any endeavor that does not include the courting of 12-year-old boys.

And not event the smart 12-year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots, of which there are plenty thanks in no small part to this network. So change the channel, turn off the TV. Do it right now.

There's always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I'm telling you art is getting is ass kicked, and it's making us mean, and it's making us bitchy, and it's making us cheap punks and that's not who we are.

We're eating worms for money, "Who Wants to Screw My Sister", guys are getting killed in a war that's got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe

And it's not even good pornography. They're just this side of snuff films, and friends, that's what's next 'cause that's all that's left.

And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott.

These are the people they're afraid of, this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you're watching. This thoroughly unpatriotic...


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Warren Ellis
has already given a critical review of the show (and by critical I am using the more academic turn in that Ellis actually thought about what he saw and what he read and made intelligent comments and arguments for his points).

You can read his first comment here.

And his second comment here.

Cool fish story

This has been everywhere today, and of course is right up my alley:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Scientists combing through undersea fauna off Indonesia's Papua province said Monday they had discovered dozens of new species, including a shark that walks on its fins and a shrimp that looks like a praying mantis.

The team from U.S.-based Conservation International also warned that the area — known as Bird's Head Seascape — is under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches and called on Indonesia's government to do more to protect it.

"It's one of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes and seascapes on the planet," said Mark Erdmann, a senior adviser of Conservation International who led two surveys to the area earlier this year.

"Above and below water, it's simply mind blowing," he said.

Erdmann and his team claim to have discovered 52 new species, including 24 new species of fish, 20 new species of coral and eight new species of shrimp. Among the highlights were an epaulette shark that walks on its fins, a praying mantis-like shrimp and scores of reef-building corals, he said.

Neil Gaiman Likes Pan's Labyrinth

From Gaiman's website:

Pan's Labyrinth is an astonishing film. It's an uncompromisingly adult film, with a child and her fairy tale inset into it as a contrast and echo. You start the film believing it to be Ofelia's film, and you gradually discover that the adult story is not background but the story as well, and they move in tandem.

...

I'm really glad I saw it, and more glad that Guillermo made it. It feels like it opens up the vocabulary of fantasy on film. And it made me so happy in its interleaving of the fantastic and the mundane without privileging either.

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Flyboys

Seeing the ads for Flyboys has made me want to see the film, but this article really makes me want to see it to support what they did and are doing with this film:

A group of filmmakers and investors including producer Dean Devlin and ace pilot David Ellison, son of Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, spent more than $60 million of their own money to make and market a film no major studio would touch.

Not even Mel Gibson with his smash hit "The Passion of the Christ" spent $60 million. "Passion" cost $25 million, and independent films typically cost less than $5 million. Hollywood studios did not want to back "Flyboys" because they worried it wouldn't draw a big enough audience to make money.

But Devlin, whose hits include big budget "Independence Day," was passionate about "Flyboys" a tale of fighter pilots in World War I who risked their lives flying in rickety biplanes.

Devlin contends passion is lacking in studio moviemaking and says that if Hollywood wants to excite audiences, it must break away from box office-safe sequels, prequels, formulaic comedies and the same old dramas.

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Evolution Denied

I just don't get this. I never had much faith in humans, but it seems as though we are getting dumber. It is as though people want to be stupid.

"Oh please, don't let someone tell me I might come from a lower form! That would shatter my world view that I am special, and that I am the center of everything."

The Vatican is even denying evolution. The Holy Roman Catholic Church had been one of the largest supporters of astronomy during Pope John Paul II. Now we are throwing all that away. And, if the church sides with the Evangelicals, who would frankly love nothing better than the destruction of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and all its members, then what is the point? They win, we lose, get ready to board the trains and head to the camps.

9.17.2006

Safecracking

Ricky Jay

Cause he is definately the man. You can see his work in The Illusionist and he actually has a part in The Prestige. And, I got to his site through the director of the most excellent film Brick, Rian Johnson.

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9.15.2006

The Question is ...

How do combine what I enjoy and what I am passionate about with what I can do and have skills for in order to have a job I enjoy and feel rewarded by and can also take care of my family with?

I look at the magazines I have stacked all around the house and it is a combination of film magazines (Premiere, Moviemaker, Filmmaker, Videography) and outdoor/adventure magazines (Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Scuba Diving). So, I need to find a way to bring these together (Film + Outdoors) into a rewarding, satisfying, semi-well paid career.

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9.14.2006

Peter Jackson on the Halo Movie

From AintItCoolNews, the third part of an interview with Jackson:

We certainly didn't set out with HALO to find a first time filmmaker to do HALO. We wanted somebody on HALO that would have 3 qualities. One, a very important one, is that they wanted to do it really badly. They had to be absolute HALO fans. That was important because there are a lot of people who would be happy to do HALO for the paycheck, there's a lot of people who would be happy to do it for the publicity they're going to get from it and the kick it'll give to their career and all that and all of that sort of stuff. There's lots of reasons to do HALO that would be attractive if you're not a HALO fan, but we didn't want any of those people, we wanted somebody who was a real HALO fan.

Secondly, and this is sort of just as important, we wanted somebody who was going to bring a unique vision to it. It's so easy to shut your eyes and imagine a really bad version of HALO. That comes to you in a frightenly simple, quick way. You think, "Oh, my God! This could be so terrible!" I guess it's because so many other video game movies have been terrible and so much other sci-fi in that type of genre has been terrible.

It's like Fantasy was before LORD OF THE RINGS. Everybody was saying, "These films aren't any good." In a sense, everybody's saying "You can't make a good film out of a game." Well, that's all crap. Good films just need good characters, good storyline and a great director to bring it to life and make a film that you've never seen before. That's what it needs. It doesn't matter a damn whether it's based on a game, a book or a piece of chewing gum, you know? That's irrelevant. It's what actually ends up on the screen that's important.

So, we wanted a director who we would get excited about their version of HALO. We wanted somebody that would make us say, "God, I'd love to see what this person would do with this story, with this material." We considered a lot of directors. A lot of directors came to us. I mean, believe me... we waited for months and months and months. We eschewed a couple of people which didn't work out. We've had lots and lots of people approaching us, obviously agents and people saying "So and so client would love to do it."

At all times they were people that we thought, "Well... their version of HALO doesn't really excite me all that much. I could imagine what it'd be like and it doesn't really (excite me)." But then when Neill came along and we saw what he'd done and we'd spoken to him... believe me, he's doing something that is very, very different from what people are imagining, from what people have seen before. Some of the visuals... He's been working with Weta pretty much full time for, I guess it'd be about 2 months now, turning out lots and lots of art every day. And maquettes, production design, color art has been coming out of there. I've got folders and folders of it at home here. It's fantastic stuff. I mean, I look through it and I get excited about the film.

We're still developing a script and we've still got work to go on the script and that's underway, but while that's happening Neill is just producing his vision of this world. It is original and new and has not been seen before on the screen. It's not Ridley Scott, it's not James Cameron, it's not what we've seen before, but it's something new and fresh and it's cool. That was important to us. Someone who was going to not go the cliched way, but go in the direction that they had an original vision for and Neill has got that in spades. We're feeling really, really good.

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9.13.2006

Down in the Park

Down in the park
Where the machmen meet
The machines are playing `kill-by-numbers
Down in the park with a friend called `five

I was in a car crash
Or was it the war?
Well, Ive never been quite the same
Little white lies like I was there

Come to zom-zoms, a place to eat
Like it was built in one day
You can watch the humans
Try to run

Oh, look, theres a rape machine
Id go outside if it looks the other way
You wouldnt believe
The things they do

Down in the park
Where the chant is death, death, death
Until the sun cries morning
Down in the park with friends of mine

We are not lovers
We are not romantics
We are here to serve you
A different face but the words never change

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The Fountain Site

The official site for The Fountain. Pretty nice ambient noise as well.

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Pan's Labyrinth Site

9.11.2006

Another CHUD Review of Pan's Labyrinth

Devin Faraci of Chud.com reviews Pan's Labyrinth:

Watching Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t just deliver the joy of seeing a well-made film. It doesn’t just deliver the wonder of a darkly beautiful fantasy brought to life. Watching Pan’s Labyrinth gives you the excitement of experiencing a filmmaker blossoming into true greatness, a director taking his spot alongside the other genius fantasists of cinema.

Guillermo del Toro has made a film that reinforces what many of us knew long before – he’s not just one of film’s greatest visual artists but is also one of the form’s consummate storytellers, a man with as much human empathy as design sense. His film brings together many of his favorite images and themes to create a new and breathtaking whole, a summation of his career to this point.

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9.10.2006

Books in 2006, film book again

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages
Strip Tease
Stormy Weather
A Princess of Mars
A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

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White by Andrew Drillon

Books in 2006, pulp

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages
Strip Tease
Stormy Weather
A Princess of Mars

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9.09.2006

Inspirations for Indiana Jones

From the excellent TheRaider.net, some movies which inspired Indiana Jones:

Zorro Rides Again (1937)
Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939)
Stagecoach (1939)
Gunga Din (1939)
Casablanca (1943)
China (1943)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Secret of the Incas (1954)
Valley of the Kings (1954)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
MacKenna's Gold (1969)

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A Princess of Mars

Currently I am reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' (yes, the same man who created and wrote Tarzan) A Princess of Mars. This is a project Hollywood has long tried to get made, most recently it was in the hands of Jan Favreau who says he is going to do the project, but he put it on the backburner while he went to do Iron Man, an adaptation of a Marvel comic.

I remembered this old AintItCoolNews piece on Princess of Mars from a few years ago when Robert Rodriguez signed on to direct it. The thing that always gets me is for how long people have been trying to adapt A Princess of Mars into a film:

"Bob Clampett and John Coleman Burroughs attempted to make it 5 years before Disney produced SNOW WHITE. Had they succeeded, it would have been the first feature-length animated film, and it would have been radically different than the type of films Disney ended up producing. Who knows what the animation industry would look like now if they had succeeded. They actually made it to animation tests that Clampett animated, while John and his wife painted the cels, and these can be seen on the BEANY AND CECIL DVD. If you want to read more about this potential version of the film, you can do so right here."

The AICN article has plenty of artwork concerning A Princess of Mars and other books from the Jack Carter series by Burroughs. There are also plenty of links to other sites concerning the series.

Ray Harryhausen also took a crack at it, but he was frustrated by the scale of the story. He never managed to find a way to break it down to a feasible size, and had to give up on it eventually.

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So, um, today

Ryan Adams kind of day me thinks. Sit around and read and let the iTunes play Ryan Adams (and I have a lot of Ryan Adams on my iTunes).

Got Princess of Mars and A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies from the library yesterday. Also reading Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen and The Tempest (for a screenplay I am just starting).

Keep needing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey; will probably do that tonight. Also recently got Singles for cheap at the Wal Mart Neighborhood Store, so maybe watch that as well.

Sitting here currently wearing a clown wig while trying to get a download copy of The Tempest from Project Gutenberg, but of course they are in the middle of a server maintenance.

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9.08.2006

Eureka Wallpaper

My current wallpaper from my favorite show on TV right now:

Top 10 News Stories Not Being Reported

Found this through digg.com, a list of the top ten news stories the mainstream media (and this includes Fox since they are mainstream media, even though they would like to play as though they are somehow outside of the mainstream):

1. The Feds and the media muddy the debate over Internet freedom.
2. Halliburton charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran.
3. World oceans in extreme danger.
4. Hunger and homelessness increasing in America.
5. High-tech genocide in Congo.
6. Federal whistleblower protection in jeopardy.
7. U.S. operatives torture detainees to death in Afghanistan and Iraq.
8. Pentagon exempt from Freedom of Information Act.
9. World Bank funds Israel-Palestine Wall.
10. Expanded air war in Iraq kills more civilians.

Target Versace

9.06.2006

Dear Sony Its Over

A break-up letter with Sony. One of the few things to make me smile today.

Link fixed, but it looks like the poor guy's site has crashed from so many different sites linking to the article. So give it a few days and maybe it will be back up.

9.05.2006

Books in 2006, more Skink

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages
Strip Tease
Stormy Weather


Can't go wrong when Skink shows up in your book.

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Boing Boing on the Broadcast Treaty

From BoingBoing:

An incredibly diverse coalition of high-powered public interest groups, industry associations, and corporations have signed an open letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office rejecting the "Broadcast Treaty," a US-led UN initiative that could do untold harm to artists, tech and telecoms companies, scholars, and people with disabilities.

Under the Broadcast Treaty, fair use, Creative Commons and the public domain would be trumped by the "broadcast right," which would be owned by the broadcaster of works. If you got a copy of a work over the air or over the Web that copyright would let you use (because it was in the public domain, because it was factual, or even because the creator had granted you permission), you'd still need to seek permission from the "caster," who would get a 50-year monopoly over the re-use of copies of the works it transmitted.

The proposal to extend this to the Web could put YouTube, Google Video, and innovative podcaster services out of business, by banning or restricting the way that these companies re-use each others' materials. And if you're a podcaster accustomed to lifting other podcasters' material and pasting it into your podcasts, you'll need permission from the company that hosts the podcasts, not just permission from the creator.

The Webcasting provision has been underwritten by Yahoo and Microsoft, whose advocates at the UN work tirelessly to keep the US on-track in pushing the rest of the world to taking it on board. The rest of the world doesn't want Webcasting, but it keeps sneaking back into the treaty, over howls of protests from artists and major governments.


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Go and read more.

9.04.2006

Death Proof Car from AICN

Man this article makes me miss Austin. It is bad enough to know Tarantino is out shoooting on the streets of Austin, but hearing talk about Austin eateries makes me homesick for there.

Harry Knowles has a pic of the car from Death Proof,
Tarantino's part of the Grindhouse double feature he is making with Rodriguez (and if I have to use first names you probably don't care about this movie).

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Steve Irwin Killed

Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter was killed while filming a documentary. Apparently a stingray Irwin was diving around attacked and killed him with a barb to the chest.

9.01.2006

CHUD Exclusive Pan's Labyrinth Teaser

Devin Faraci of Chud.com on Pan's Labyrinth:

"Here’s a warning about Pan’s Labyrinth: people walked out of my recent screening crying. If you only know Guillermo del Toro from Blade II and Hellboy, this December you’ll be kicked in the solar plexus and have your heart broken by a movie that’s deep, beautiful, brutal, touching and magical. Pan’s Labyrinth is the kind of movie I sit through hundreds of other movies hoping for – a film that’s deeply personal, completely transcendent and effortlessly engaging. It’s a feat of the imagination in the way that all the best fairy tales are."


Chud has the exclusive premiere of the teaser trailer.

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Recap of Will Wright Talk

Your Weekend

Well besides drinking yourself into an oblivion after realizing it is going to be another long season since we have no offensive line, I have a suggestion.

Go grab as many guy friends as you can, tell the women to get their ass in the kitchen and make some pie, then go watch a double feature of Beerfest (American men showing the Germans how the fuck quarters is played) and Crank (Jason Statham causing mayhem and destruction while spanking Amy Smart's ass in public).

By the way, The Rock really needs to just take some time and go study with Statham and find out what it takes to have a decent action career. I mean the guy should be doing these kind of movies as well and less Gridiron Gang, which might be good; but I won't see it till it comes to Netflix.

Really, what does it take for the Rock to get back to doing more movies like The Rundown? That was a great little action movie with some nice innovation at times. My favorite piece is watching The Rock destroy the mining town while the pilot quoted Dylan Thomas. I have yet to see the Walking Tall remake but it looks like a semi-decent way to spend a late night. Doom I have no freaking desire to see.

The Rock has charisma and acting chops to take over and bring us some great action roles. Now he just needs a decent team behind the camera to help him do that. I applaud his taking chances on roles, but the ones he takes a chance on seem to backfire since the movies are not that good.

But Statham has the two Transporter flicks and now Crank. His brief appearance in Collateral had me wondering what chaos and death he would cause at the end. I have to say I was disappointed not to see him do more in that, but I am sure that is why Mann placed him there.

By the way, Devin Faraci from Chud.com has a great review of Crank, and this to me should be the blurb on all the posters:

"Seriously, when I tell you that Crank is amoral, I mean it. If you’re easily offended, this is probably not the film for you."


Its Labor Day weekend, College Football is starting (Notre Dame vs Georgia Tech tomorrow night on ABC) and there are actual movies geared towards adult males. What more could you ask for (besides maybe televised New Zealand All Blacks games and maybe EPL scores actually being broadcast in real time on ESPN and for State to have an offensive line)? So go grab some bourbon and some beer, grill some meat, and go watch some asskicking.

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