It is difficult to convey how good this show is without coming off like a gushing fanboy. It’s that name. True, revisualizing the mostly silly original show was the reason it was greenlighted, but it makes for a bold brand. This is unfortunate, because it is one of the most thoughtful, exciting, and well-written shows to air since “The Sopranos.” The thing about this particular, quite appropriate comparison is one can easily advocate the greatness of David Chase’s HBO series and, because of the show’s sort of neutral-sounding name, come off sounding mature.

When you tell someone “Battlestar Galactica” is one of the tightest-scripted shows on television, one which regularly explores big themes of morality, mortality, authority and technology while delivering tense, character-driven plots, the someone you’re telling this to rarely even get past the name. I’ve actually had this happen to me: When I asked an acquaintance if they watched “Battlestar Galactica,” he replied by bugging his eyes slightly and, in an affected nerdy lisp, said “You mean ‘Battlethtar Galacthica?’” In the very next sentence, he admitted had never even heard of it.

It’s their loss, and really that makes it everyone’s loss.

This great show with the geeky name set a new high standard for series storytelling, and not just for science fiction shows. When it finishes, there will be “Caprica,” a new show In the same universe, slated to start in 2010. But it’s a prequel, so the characters of “BSG” aren’t coming back. Bill and Lee Adama, anguished Kara Thrace, comically self-involved Gaius Baltar, Tigh, Chief Tyrol, Anders and the sexy, scary Number Six, no more.

Coincidentally, this very weekend there is to be a live auction of the props, costumes and other tangible evidence of the production of “Battlestar Galactica” in Pasadena. (they must have trucked it all down from Vancouver.) These sort of things are a great opportunity, in that with a little money and auctioning skill one can own, say, a Colonial Fleet lapel pin or one of Number Six’s miniskirts or a full-sized Viper for the kids to play on in the backyard.

What I don’t like about it is this auction is also a wake. Like the Star Trek auction a few years back, it’s the studio saying “It’s really over and it ain’t coming back.” For a fellow brought up in the era of open-ended television series, a part of me thinks it transcends logic. “Why, of Course it can come back! Look at ‘Family Guy!’ Or, uh, ‘Battlestar Galactica!’”

So Dan: Pasadena is too far for me to make on short notice, so you have to get down there and get me a Raptor windshield. Oh, okay: I know it won’t fit in your car. Just the auction catalog then. Thanks.

–Skot C.

The Fast and The Furious was a big hit: It had everything one was looking for in escapist summer entertainment, and tied into the red-hot custom-import racing subculture. Kids from New Jersey and San Dimas to Osaka and Hong Kong were tricking out their Hondas and Mazdas with high-performance gear and retina-thrashing paintjobs and raced them in the streets, and the film captured the look and feel of this phenomenon well.

As far as the story went, however, the movie was a Studebaker: A creaky old chestnut of a script about an undercover cop infiltrating a street gang to get to a criminal mastermind. This was the basic story of White Heat (1949), lots of exploitation films from the fifties, too many biker films from the seventies, Point Break and The Departed (2006), which was at least Oscar-worthy.

But sometimes all you need is a sexy cast to sell a frozen leftover plot, and TFATF had that in abundance. Paul Walker was Brian O’Connor the undercover cop, surfer-boy cute. The bald, buff, improbably East Coast accented Vin Diesel was Dominic Toretto, the bad guy (or was he?). Ingenues Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster were the love interests.

Breakout roles for all four actors, and predictably when it came time to make the sequel (2 Fast 2 Furious, 2003) only Paul Walker showed up. Vin Diesel and director Rob Cohen moved on to try at international spy thrillers with the remarkably stiff xXx. The girls moved on as well– not to better things, however. Jordana was in the laughably bad D.E.B.S. and Michelle Rodriguez– Well, she was in Bloodrayne and a few episodes of “Lost.”

Despite the presence of Tyrese Gibson and Eva Mendes, 2 Fast 2 Furious suffered the inevitable fate of all franchised enterprises: Diminishing returns. It’s that damned rule that says that if you output the exact same product over and over again, you will get less return on investment every time. In Hollywood, this isn’t always the law (here are some nice examples) but generally Police Academy rules apply.

Speaking of which– According to the IMDb, Police Academy 8 is scheduled to be released in 2011. Which is a good thing, because the world is scheduled to come to an end the year after that.

Universal wasn’t done with the custom-import thing yet, so out came another sequel: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006. Everyone involved with the original had jettisoned at this point. Zachery Ty Brian, Who played Tim Allen’s doofusy kid Brad in “Home Improvement,” was fourth-billed. It went nowhere, did nothing. No surprise: It was very much in line with how diminishing returns works. The studio was trying to squeeze just one more release out of a bone-dry franchise.

Ta-dah! Here comes a brand new one, set to release in April 2009. It’s starkly named Fast & Furious. But the puzzling part: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster are all back. For the life of me, I cannot think of another circumstance where all the initial leads of a franchise have ditched en masse, and then reassembled far downstream, with a block of irrelevant sequels between them and the original.

Perhaps the hard fiscal realities of the present time and the somewhat modest career arcs of the principals in the last few years made this do-over inevitable. And Universal is positively giddy about branding this release as being exactly the same movie as the first one. Its tagline says it all: “New Model. Original Parts.” The pre-release poster features not a customized Japanese racecar but Dominic’s totemic 1970 Dodge Charger from the first movie.

Best is the trailer, which I had the pleasure of running across in HD last night. It detailed the heist of a super-long gas truck by our leads. With the exception of the fact they were jacking an oh-so-valuable gas truck (which dates the thing to this summer’s gas-price spike) and the stated location of said jacking (The Dominican Republic, according to the titles, apparently in a part of that island nation that looks just like the desert north of Los Angeles), they did the exact same thing in the first movie.

Which is the point, apparently.

–Skot C.

The themes of these canceled hotel-casino projects can only be speculated upon by an uninformed public. So let’s get started!

• Las Vegas, Las Vegas. Theme: Hotel casino based on a Las Vegas theme. Main Features: The decorative area that leads from the Strip to the Main door is a scaled-down miniature of Las Vegas, including a miniature Las Vegas, Las Vegas, which has an even smaller scale miniature strip in it’s miniature decorative area. Entertainment: A rotating slate of tribute shows of whoever is headlining elsewhere that week. (h/t to K. David, and “Kim Possible,” who came up with this concept independent of each other.)

• Reno, Reno. Theme: Like Las Vegas, Las Vegas, but smaller and quieter. Entertainment: Nice cars.

• New Jersey, New Jersey. Theme: An elaborately detailed tribute to HBO’s “The Sopranos.” Features: Fountain in front is a reproduction of Paterson Falls, where Rusty was thrown off of by Mikey Palmice on orders of Junior Soprano. This is re-enacted every hour, and every half-hour in summer. Reflecting pool below is full of ducks. Casino-within-a-casino: Atlantic City, Atlantic City. Entertainment: Feggedabodit! The Bada Bing, of course, only much bigger. Frank Sinatra Jr. and Frankie Valli at Adrianna’s Crazy Horse on weekends. Pine Barrens Outdoor Fun Center for the kiddies. Eats: Madon’!. Satriale’s, Arnie’s Vesuvio II, Carm’s Kitchen.

• Eco-Vegas. Theme: Environmentally responsible gaming. Features: All fixtures, slot machines, etc. recycled from other casinos. Tower is notable for not being lit, and being covered with sheets housekeeping has hung out to dry in an earth-friendly way. Guests can gamble with either money or carbon-offset credits. Entertainment: Less floorshows than earnest lectures and slideshows. Eats: Only vegetarian casino in town, with only locally-grown produce. Guests are advised to take it easy on the jimsonweed soup.

• Alaric’s Dark Ages Palace. Theme: Competitor to Caesars Palace, right across the street. Features: gamble among the toppled columns and ruined villas of Old Rome. A theme very much in alignment with current reduced expectations. Entertainment: Pagans put to the torch nightly. Aside from that, not much. Only casino in town with a monastery. Eats: Every restaurant features food you can eat with your fingers. Lots of beer.

–Skot C.

It’s changed a bit since then.

It’s too much to take in, three days of sensory overload. To wander the Strip and take in the state of the art in wallet-vacuuming technologies is an education in the raw potential of the Free Market. At least I was there in the winter, and could walk down a public street in the low sun and upper 50s. In summer the average outdoor temperature, day or night, is over 100°F and you have to retreat to the air-conditioned comfort of the casinos.

A few impressions:

• Fremont Street Experience: One of the really great attractions in Vegas. A four-block -long curved canopy of LEDs that puts on an hourly show that has to be seen to be believed. Managed to catch two shows: A Queen themed one at 9 and the following one which was set to Don McLean’s “American Pie.” I don’t know how you feel about this song (which was #1 for four weeks in 1972 and ranked the #5 song of the 20th century by the RIAA) but I can’t stand it. I was sick of it the first time I visited Las Vegas. Anyway, that show features go-go dancers cavorting all over the screen and computer-graphic hippie flowers and little news clips of JFK and Elvis and such. At one point, during one of the “heavy” verses, a tremendous video inset chugged it’s way across Fremont street, a clip of Charles Manson. I’m sure the creators of this particular show were making some sort of point, but as I stood there, surrounded by tourists, gamblers, drunk kids, and cowboys (lots and lots of cowboys: The National Rodeo was in town) all staring up at his demented visage, I realized Manson was getting what he deserved up there. He was like one of those villainous Kryptonians from Superman 2, trapped in a space-traveling acrylic paperweight, beyond relevance.

• There is a weird tone in every casino floor I walked through– And believe me, I walked through a LOT of them, from the Luxor at the south end of the Strip to the Golden Gate downtown. The collective sound of all the hundreds of slot machines make a deep minor-note drone. I was reminded of cicadas, so prevalent and omnipresent it was a dimensionless, so deep a sound it gets inside your head. It was a bit like the organ notes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey– You know you’re in for something big, but you’re not quite sure what. Since nothing in Vegas is actually left to chance, there is no question this tone is being created on purpose. My wife and I took to giving it an Eastern flavor as we cruised through the labyrinthine gaming areas, chanting as we walked: “Oooommmmmm… Time to gammmmble… Ommmmm… Feeeeeling luuuuucky… Ommmmmmm…”

• Silliest theme for a casino: The Bellagio. As far as I can tell, it has no theme. I seems like nothing more than massive tribute to the polyurethane-detailed faux-rustic architecture of the average McMansion.

• Silliest theme for a casino on purpose: Circus Circus. Of course.

• Most Honest Theme for a casino: Caesars Palace. The place was dreamed up in the 1960s, the era of the sword-and-sandal epic and Cleopatra. It was in the depths of the Cold War, just before Vietnam, Pax Americana at it’s fullest. The place has grown since then, but it is still an elaborate tribute to the excesses of the Roman Empire. Fluted Corinthian columns, talking, moving statues of the Pagan gods (they had those in antiquity!), a sense of the sheer majesty of power. Not much is said about the Fall of the Empire, of course, and anyone who looks like a Goth or a Vandal (bearded, barely civilized, penniless) is not-too-gently escorted to the Strip by helpful centurions.

• Must-see attraction: The Atomic Testing Museum, located well off the strip. Chronicles the history and utility of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, less than 100 miles north. The last above-ground nuclear detonation was in 1970, and it was accidental: An underground test got out of control and shot out above the surface, a mushroom cloud visible all the way to Vegas.

• What a Las Vegas travel blog has to do with Show Biz: Everything. Las Vegas is pure show biz. more so than Hollywood. The corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas, the heart of the Strip, is dominated by the largest billboard I have ever seen, so large it covered an entire side of the Flamingo Hotel. It featured Donny and Marie Osmond.

• The Fight: Oscar de la Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand. It was going down the last day I was there. So naturally the MGM Grand and the immediate area around it became a tremendous a**holes-only zone. Obnoxiously dressed rich people, jerks in rented Ferraris driving on sidewalks and packs of falling-down-drunk trust-fund kids were in abundance. Every religious nut and t-shirt seller and strip-club-hired, nudie-card-distributing undocumented immigrant in Vegas was also there, piled up like hamsters in a pet-shop cage. We got out as quickly as we could, running for the dubious safety of M&M World, a four-story establishment devoted to the edification of little round candies.

• Total gambling losses: $16. Take that, Vegas!

–Skot C.

The original version was a British show, and it was very, very good. I’ve written on this show before, when the second season was set to begin on BBC America. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have access to videos of the BBC broadcast versions of both series AND the spin-off, “Ashes to Ashes.”

I’m not complaining about how BBC America operates, but there is a quantitative difference between the UK and US versions. The British Broadcasting Corporation is a “quasi-autonomous public corporation” which raises revenues through licensing fees. No commercials. So original hour-long episodes of “Life on Mars” run for 58 minutes. BBC America shows ads, and to make room for them they have to edit down the episodes to about 42 minutes. Comparing the American versions to the British originals the cut-down method becomes apparent: They remove any nudity and carve out or minimize the “B” stories. This gives the cut shows a peculiar, staccato rhythm, and as they they stick close to the “A” stories they seem fast-paced and focused.

Making the American version apparently hasn’t been easy. The first U.S. version was driven by David E. Kelly: A pilot was shot, set in Los Angeles, and it featured Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler and Colm Meaney (”Star Trek: Deep Space 9″) as Gene Hunt. Then the strike hit, and the network decided they didn’t like it. It was completely retooled: The show was moved to New York, and they upped the ante by getting three heavy-hitters in the cast: Gretchen Mol (The Notorious Bettie Page), Michael Imperioli (“The Sopranos”), and Harvey Keitel (Mean Streets) as Gene Hunt. Jason O’Mara still plays Sam Tyler.

Even now, less than a week to premiere, the show has been remarkably well hidden from the public. I have looked hard online for extended scenes and such and all I have found are several rapid-fire previews. This may actually be a bad sign (no extensive previews might mean it sucks in the details) or it might be a sign of how cautious the network is being.

If it’s two-thirds as good as the original series it’ll be better than almost anything on American television.

–Skot C.

Here’s a show-biz way to look at it: The accumulated wealth completely destroyed in one day by jittery brokers was over twice as much as the accumulated box office of the top 100 films of all time – everything between Titanic (#1, US$1.83 billion) and Madagascar (#100, US$407 million). I calculated the top 100 cumulatively made US$530 billion– A drop in the bucket, apparently.

Another fun-fact take on today’s calamity: It was enough money to make Spiderman 3, the largest-budget movie of all time, 4,170 times. But nobody wants to do that (one Spiderman 3 is way more than enough). So: If we assume the studio insists the next Spidey movies hold at the US$258 million budget mark, they could have used today’s losses to release one all-new, screechy, inconsequential, effects-laden Spiderman sequel every weekend from now until January 2089.

All good fun, but It’s a bit of a stretch to post an article about divertissiment such as movies, television and music when global markets are imploding. I know people who have already lost substantial amounts of retirement money– and the way Washington is failing to offer meaningful help and leadership, they could lose a lot more. It is historically awful stuff, and it’s gonna hit us all.

And it will affect the movie industry. It already is. The credit market is tightening up, and that is going to make movies look like a riskier investment. This makes dealmaking all that more difficult. And dealmaking is the definition of Hollywood: Agents, Producers, Managers, D-people, an army of people in splendid offices spendng all day on the phone getting people to pay for things.

If the film industry is going to try to play it safe, they’ll go two ways: big and small. Big studios proved very well that tentpoles (big movies like The Dark Knight and Iron Man) are still a solid investment, so long as the money is well-spent. Cutting out under-performing over-the-title talent is an obvious way to save money, so I think the upcoming movies will look a lot like the upcoming Watchmen: big effects, big budget, no stars. Watch for the stars of today to be increasingly doing their stuff in digital and small-budget Oscar-bait movies.

Of course there are other opinions– In fact, Peter Bart is positively bullish on Tinsel town.

If we are sliding into a recession– and at this point, it’s not really a question of “if” anymore– the most intriguing question is how it’s going to culturally affect things. For instance, CW has an armful of shows about spoiled rich kids: “Priviliged,” “Gossip Girl,” and the relaunched “90210.” In the coming weeks and months of economic recession are we going to find the sexy antics of the leisure class as just fun, upper-crust diversions, the 21st Century version of 1930s Nick and Nora movies and white telephone films? Or are we going to find them infuriating, elitist, and disconnected from reality?

–Skot C.

Slate, the online magazine, did an informal survey of its readers to find out which was the most ordered and not watched movie among them. The concensus? HOTEL RWANDA. The much-lauded Don Cheadle movie based on a true story is in the top ten most popular rentals at Netflix, and apparently also the one most often guiltily sent back without ever seeing the inside of of a DVD player. Good news if you’re bugged by scratched DVDs – HOTEL RWANDA is probably always in mint condition!

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey told me the company doesn’t keep track of which movies its subscribers hold onto the longest but said he wouldn’t be surprised if Hotel Rwanda was the one. He confessed he’s been sitting on a copy since September 2006.

I’m guilty of this kind of thing myself, but not lately. In the last 90 days I’ve watched everything I ordered. The one I wish I’d returned without watching was IDIOCRACY, which depressed and frightened me. Maybe I’ll feel the same about WALL-E. But God knows I’ve sent back plenty of material, from foreign classics to studio blockbusters.  In fact, here’s a list:

GHOST RIDER
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
DEAD MAN
THE THIRD MAN
CONTROL ROOM
FINDING NEMO

As you can see, my rejection tastes are very eclectic.  I got a documentary, a classic, a couple of huge hits, and a couple of quirky independents. And come to think of it, I started to watch DEAD MAN but fell asleep.

I can’t speak to Netflix as a business model, but it has revolutionized the renting of movies. It allows you to consider renting any number of things that you would never go near if you had to pay for them individually. If you never go near them once you’ve rented them anyway, that’s your problem.

-daniel k.

It does something no Pixar film has yet done: mix live-action inserts into the realistically animated scenes. WALL-E, the incredibly cute robotic protagonist of the piece, has a job compacting garbage in the ruins of an abandoned city and stacking the trash cubes into immense towers. He spends his nights obsessively watching an ancient VHS tape of Hello Dolly! (d. Gene Kelly, 1969). And not a CG-imitation version: the real thing, an actual clip of Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew (and interestingly, not Barbra Streisand: cheaper appearance residual payments!). Fred Willard also makes a sly on-camera cameo as an ineffectual George W. Bush type. The combination of live action, incredibly vivid computer animation and visual design assisted by Roger Deakins (The Coen Brothers’ favored DP) has resulted in a film that is at times breathtakingly beautiful and cinematic.

The first half of the story is stark and simple, a tale of a lonely robot meeting another one in a desolate cityscape. The second half takes place in a humongous spaceship in which humanity has escaped their polluted, used-up home planet. And as this half develops, I recognized a strangely familiar premise being presented.

WALL-E takes place 700 years in the future. Between now and this time, a large Costco or Wal-Mart like corporation called Buy-N-Large takes over everything everywhere. It’s hyper-consumerist ways eventually produce so much garbage, pollution and environmental degradation that its customers (that is, the human race) are ferried off-planet, leaving an army of robots behind to clean up. Meanwhile, the people on the ship have evolved into the ultimate consumers: Sessile blobs who cannot move off their floating couches, constantly staring at a video screen which floats in front of their faces, unaware of their very surroundings.

The Mike Judge film Idiocracy (2006: I reviewed it here a few months ago) painted an almost identical dystopian scenario three years ago (it got delayed a year in release). In the future of Idiocracy the story actually gets into gear when the protagonist’s suspended-animation casket is delivered via an avalanche from an immense tower of trash. There are more companies in existence in this universe than in WALL-E’s, but a centerpiece location is a gigantic Costco, so vast it stretches off into the horizon and so cavernous crashed planes stick out of it. Brawndo, a sports-drink manufacturer, also figures into the plot, as a corporation so large they bought the FDA and basically replaced all sources of drinkable water with its beverage.

Future humans are basically represented the same way in both films: hyper-consumers who have become hopelessly dependent on the machines that keep them alive. And the point of depicting them as such is the same in both films: these pampered, infantile, soft people are obviously us. These two films look so much alike in some scenes they could conceivably be the same storyline. Idiocracy is part 1, before the Earth is evacuated: WALL-E is part 2, after we’ve taken off for space.

But there are differences, mostly in the attitude of the filmmakers. Mike Judge is cynical: We are a stupid, doomed race, and the efforts of the relatively smart, present-day hero to save humanity only delays our inevitable extinction. The folks at Pixar believe people are basically good and kinda smart, and the creative efforts of robots and humans alike are a constant source of hope.

Legend has it WALL-E is the final project generated at a single idea session at Pixar, one that also generated Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. No doubt that may be so, but the details look a lot like something from a 3-year-old failed satire.

–Skot C.

We went to see Iron Man, but we changed our mind at the box office and decided to catch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because it started a half-hour earlier.

We shoulda waited.

It’s not that Crystal Skull is a bad film: It’s quite well-made, with engaging performances by all the principals, a fast-paced story, and impressive sets and special effects. But ultimately there is something deadening about the whole affair, a sort of weariness with it’s safe, familiar sort of action movie conventions.

In fact, the best part is the beginning, which opens in the desert Southwest in 1957. It’s fun to see how a 1930s character like Indiana Jones is fitted into the Cold War era, and there’s plenty of nifty 50s stuff there too, like A-bombs and saucer men from Mars (and, because this is a George Lucas movie, a deuce coupe: A 1932 Ford hot rod). Actually, only when Shia LaBeouf shows up doing his shaky Brando bit twenty-odd minutes in does it start to falter. And by the time the main plot kicks in, it all starts to look so lazy– The bad guys wear red stars instead of swastikas, but aside from that it’s all been done before, thrice.

What didn’t help the mild sense of ennui I experienced was the attached trailer– the preview that came with the print, which shows last. It was for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This film, which opens in August, is a CG animated movie that will kick off the upcoming “Clone Wars” TV series.

Apparently, it takes place at some time between Episodes II and III, in the thick of the actual Clone War. Here’s the synopsis, courtesy of the IMDb:

The Clone Wars are raging between the Separatists and the Galactic Republic. When Jabba the Hutt’s son is taken by a group of renegades, two Jedi are summoned to investigate. Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi depart in search of answers: where is the Hutt’s son, and who is controlling this mysterious renegade group? Yoda sends Ahsoka Tano along as Anakin’s apprentice, Obi-Wan duels Asajj Ventress, and Anakin finds himself dueling Count Dooku once more. Meanwhile, the Sith plan to instigate a three-way war, including the Hutts.

Alright, since the end of this particular story was told in Episode III, what on earth is the point of all this? Because we know who must survive, every major character is shielded from harm. So we’re expected to watch them duel with lightsabers, knowing exactly who is going to win every time. And No doubt the new characters with the funny consonant-heavy names are gonna be so much Bantha fodder or, to use a term from another franchise, red shirts.

I have already complained that George Lucas needs crank up some new franchises. Crystal Skull and Clone Wars are two more strong arguments for quitting. They are leaden with ennui. Canon continuity means the good guys can’t die, and in the case of Star Wars neither can the bad guys. Truly new ideas cannot take root: they are incompatible with the crushing force of precedence. Therefore, trying to raise a sense of jeopardy and suspense is impossible. The tiredness of these franchises make for diminishing returns: no matter how much effort they put into these new offerings, they offer fewer surprises and less compelling reasons for audiences to engage them at all.

When Crystal Skull ends, the filmmakers convey in a subtle manner a feeling the series will not continue. I don’t want to bet against Mr. LaBeouf taking up the brown fedora at some future date, though. Oh boy.

–Skot C.

You can vote now on the website. The top three contenders?

Pee Wee Martini

Ellwood 

Squiggy 

And trailing, but my personal favorite:

Rascal 

The sideways tongue thing, I’m told, is the result of missing teeth. The teeth apparently hold the tongue in a dog’s head. I have it on authority that none of these dogs are shaved or surgically altered, which is a claim you can’t make at Westminster.

The Sonoma-Marin County Fair is June 18-22. If you’re in the area like oh, say Skot, it’s probably worth a visit. Bring treats! And blindfolds.

-daniel k.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends.

Sure, we both take swipes at things that are bad or silly or excessive, but these criticisms are generally leveled at systemic problems (goodie bags, tiny video, labor issues, popcorn prices) or the personal shortcomings of the celebrated (Amy Winehouse, Kate Hudson, Sofia Coppola). We generally leave movies alone to live or die by their own lights, sniping only parenthetically or, in the case of the podcast, through brief, witty, withering wordplay.

What makes me proud of the site is the fact we take the time to highlight new discoveries (”Life on Mars,” “Torchwood,” the Heroic Cheerleader sub-genre, The Met in HD). One of the more satisfying aspect of the general editorial direction here– completely unbidden, mind you, just something Dan and I do– is re-evaluate and recommend older works (Brute Force, Lolita, Basic Instinct). It may not seem like it when the articles are skimmed, but one of the hallmarks of TPN:: Box Office Weekly is a generally positive approach to the creative works of others, reserving harsher criticism for the business itself.

Having said all that, I have to break precedent and go after a film based solely on it’s preview.

Based just on said trailer, The Love Guruâ„¢ looks like one of the worst movies to come along in quite a while. Watch the preview if you don’t believe me, or the annoyingly web 2.0 home page. Whatever comedic magic Mike Meyers had has been dissipated: Whatever new or original ideas he brought to his movies seem to have abandoned him. It is also offensive on it’s face, with midget jokes and Indian stereotypes mis-fired by the bushel basket. Meyer’s “Guru Pitka” seem to be another variant on an Austin Powers-type character, a vaguely 60s-era pastiche.

Am I judging The Love Guruâ„¢ by it’s trailer? Yeah, for two good reasons: Hey, if you’re marketing a comedy aren’t you supposed to put the funniest parts of the film in it? If this is a Hollywood verity, than something has gone seriously off the rails here. Secondly, from what I could glean (First saw the trailer a few night ago on broadcast: it thudded so loudly, this article had to be created to counter it) this thing is so stunningly reprehensible I believe this break from our editorial practices is something of a public service.

Namaste,

–Skot C.

Esurance, an online insurance company, created a spokeswoman for their ads in the form of “Erin Esurance:” a Flash-animated, pink-haired hottie who fights evil, global warming and excessive paper use while pitching the easy-to-use online features of her parent company. The “Erin” campaign is not an ad agency concoction: she was created in-house by the Bay Area insurance firm. This is evident by the fluid, line-less, colorful “CalArts” style of animation used in the ads, and in the fact the character is sort of loosely bonded to the company’s message (ad agency creations are strongly focus-tested and rarely exceed the message, the Geico Cavemen being the exception).

Probably because of her strong image branding and the character’s unintentional stand-alone qualities, she’s turned up in some unusual places:

• The first post-strike new episode of “My Name Is Earl” was introduced by none other than Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC/Universal. Big props to his performance: one of the funniest parts of the episode. At one point, Mr. Zucker was demonstrating how one can watch episodes of “Earl” online– after you see an ad, of course. The ad featured Erin Esurance doing her sexy black-suited action thing, which prompted the president of NBC to say: “I once dated a girl with pink hair. (under his breath) Craaa-zy!”

• Another first for Erin: a movie tie-in. She is featured in ad cross-promoting the upcoming summer action/fantasy film Speed Racer. In the ad, she sits in the front row of a darkened movie auditorium, laughing, gasping, enjoying the film. Very engaging.

Her appealing juxtaposition led me to think this whole situation is exactly backwards. What sounds more compelling to you: Yet another CG-heavy film based on some half-forgotten but easily branded kiddie product, or a movie featuring Erin? This ad really sold me– not on the Speed Racer movie, or Esurance, but Erin’s viability as a movie star. (Well, as long as she doesn’t actually pitch insurance during the movie, that is.)

Time to get a new agent, Erin!

–Skot C.

The second night I was there I was the recipient of a happy coincidence: AMC was running a Godfather marathon, and I was lucky enough to catch the end of The Godfather (Part I, 1972) just before bed. I sat up for another hour or so and watched the beginning of The Godfather: Part II (1974), marveling at the elegance of the Corleone family compound, just down the lake shore from the time-share condo we were lodged.

Actually no. Lake Tahoe used to have several interesting connections to show biz. All gone.

The first was the fact the entire northeast corner of Lake Tahoe, from Spooner Lake all the way to the north end, was once part of the mammoth and fictional Ponderosa Ranch, the stomping grounds of the Cartwright family on TV’s “Bonanza” which ran in glorious color from 1959 to 1973.

Most of the show was produced in backlots in Hollywood, but they would occasionally come up to the lake to shoot scenes, on standing sets erected near Incline Village. After the show’s run, a Ponderosa Ranch theme park opened up where the standing sets were.

About fifteen years ago, my wife (who watched the show) persuaded me to go check it out. I suppose it was great: I have never, to this very day, seen an entire episode of “Bonanza.” I’ve attended theme parks where I didn’t agree with the theme: Yes, I’ve been to the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace. But at least  knew who Nixon was. The Ponderosa may have well have been the museum of Zoroastrianism. Still, it was a nice day when I visited and I got some fresh mountain air and exercise.

About the time “Bonanza” was wrapping up, Francis Ford Coppola had scouted a location for a large part of the second Godfather movie. It was Fleur du Lac, a huge private compound on the California side of the lake just north of Emerald Bay built by aluminum magnate Henry J. Kaiser.

Anyone who has seen the film remembers the distinctive look of Michael Corleone’s home: the native creek stone walls, the rustic Craftsman-style paned windows , the elaborate band shell on the lake, the cavernous stone boathouse. Watching the film in bed up in Tahoe I noticed something new: some of the metal grillworks on the outside of the main house were crafted to resemble giant spider webs. I can’t help but wonder if these were art department additions, to visually reinforce a theme of some sort.

And of course, you can’t look out over Lake Tahoe without thinking about poor Fredo.

But Fleur du Lac is no more. Shortly after filming wrapped on Part II, the entire compound was torn down, cleared out for new millionaire condos. And the Ponderosa Ranch theme park closed in 1994.

The reasons both of these are gone: the land near Lake Tahoe is just too valuable now. If you’re visiting California, Lake Tahoe is still worth the trip up to the Sierras (just take it easy on the progressive slots), but if you’re a film buff it’s best to remember it as it was.

–Skot C.

Addenda: At the time-share in Tahoe the local TV channels originate in Reno, Nevada. The local Fox affiliate KRXI airs the Comedy Central parody cop-show “Reno 911!” late at night. I’ve always wondered what the folks in Reno thought of the show. I’m guessing they consider it a reality show. –s

At a table strewn with lead figurines and hex-graph paper sit FOUR PLAYERS and a DUNGEON MASTER, behind his dragon-emblazed standing folder.

DUNGEON MASTER: Did you hear about Gygax?

JAPHETH BLIGH (8th-level warrior): What’s that? A troll? I’m taking out my +5 Longsword–

HELVETICA the MEDIUM (6th-level Cleric) –I’m reaching into my robe for a scroll–

DM: No. Gary Gygax.

DELINDIR The ELFMASTER (7th-level Paladin) Gary? That’s a dumb name for a Troll.

MIGHTY MOGENKELLER (2nd-level dwarf) I have a +1 pointed stick! I’m jabbing him!

MogenKeller rolls twelve-sided dice. It comes up 1.

DM: That doesn’t count, Mogenkeller. Gary Gygax is a real person. He just passed away. He had a influence that far exceeded his own creations. He co-developed “Dungeons and Dragons,” which was sort of a phenomena in itself– But the genius of his legacy lies in the details. The role-playing game, where one inhabits a character and is guided on adventures by the Dungeon Master, a sort of movie director, was unique enough. But he added quantifiable elements such as ability scores: each character has an admixture of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, all mediated by Experience and Hit points. Run out of too many of these attributes or hit points, and your character is toast. This gaming system, initially kept pencil-on-paper, translated easily into computer-based attribute scoring. First-person shooter games like Half-Life, Doom, and Halo are merely computer-based applications of this basic system, first codified in 1974.

H. the M.: I knew that.

J.B.: Geek.

DM: The immersive, interactive world of D&D could also be considered a real-world dry run for virtual-community online games like The Sims and Second Life. In tone, details and type of play, the universe of D&D is virtually indistinguishable from World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

H. the M.: Hey, why aren’t we playing that?

J.B.: Perhaps because there is something more intrinsically creative and imaginative about a role-playing game that is played face-to-face, and largely occurs inside the players heads, not on a computer screen.

D. the E.: Maybe you’re too cheap to afford $20 a month to subscribe to Warcraft.

J.B.(quietly): Let’s talk about this at home, okay?

M.M.: I have a pointed stick!

H. the M.: Hush, now.

DM: As stigmatized as D&D seems to be in popular culture (”geek!”) it’s mythical lexicon, culled from the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, has though it’s direct and indirect influences kept open a popular-culture window to fantasy entertainment. Would the Lord of the Rings trilogy have taken in nearly $3 billion if the core audience were strictly Tolkien fans– aging 60s college students– rather than the generations of people familiar with the strongly Tolkien-like D&D universe?

J.B.: That dude must have had total wealth points!

DM: You’d think so. It’s somewhat illustrative that Gary Gygax never got really, really rich off his fecund co-invention. Wizards of the Coast, a bunch of RPG publishers who got rich off of Magic: The Gathering (a very D&D-like collectible-card game) bought Gygax’s company outright in 1997, a case of the imitators acquiring the original.

D.the E.: Still, an impressive legacy nonetheless.

H. the M.: Quite the visionary.

M.M. I have a pointed stick!

J.B. (in character): I’m turning rouge… And I’m turning and stabbing Mogenkeller with my +5 Longsword!

Japheth rolls a 12.

DM: You killed him.

J.B.: Hah! Now you have to go out and get more Dr. Pepper. We’re all out.

–Skot C.

Most of the things I can’t stand have to do with excess: Bloated productions, overinflated star salaries, celebrity obsession. And I hate them because I love movies. I studied film in college, and I know that the medium has the power to transform lives, to stir and inspire, the elevate our lives and broaden the very horizons of our existence. The elements of film’s power– cinematography, storytelling, montage, acting, all the parts of the whole– are rarely if ever served by excesses most people associate with the business of making movies.

(I could split hairs here: One could argue there is a strange art to cinematic excess. I’ll even go back to Daniel’s new acquisition Showgirls as an example: too much sex, too much scenery-chewing, too hateful, nihilistic and decadent. But that film is as perfectly proportional as a chorine’s gams. In fact, the film’s only misstep, it’s only true excess, is the rape of Nomi’s roommate Molly. It was pure brutality, and it didn’t fit into the logical, self-contained universe of sexual politics within the film. That scene alone is the probable reason Showgirls remains a guilty pleasure, rather than a beloved cult classic.)

But there is only one thing about Hollywood that has managed to simultaneously disgust AND baffle me: the phenomenon of swag bags and gift suites.

Celebrity presenters, award nominees and other such high-profile celebrities are routinely given “goodie bags” for their participation. These usually contain incredibly valuable luxury items, with some goodie bags reaching $100,000 in value. In an article from the Washington Post:

The contents of [2005's] official Oscar bag included four nights at the Vera Wang suite at the Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach, handcrafted truffles in a silk box, a private dinner party at Mortons, a vintage silk kimono, a Krups premium pump espresso machine, personalized dog training, a pearl-and-diamond necklace, spa treatments, surfing lessons, two nights and days of wine tasting in Carmel, Calif., mobile phones, a cashmere travel blanket and “an at-home artisanal cheese experience for six.”

We got a nice little glimpse of this world in the episode “Luxury Lounge” in “The Sopranos.” Christopher Moltisanti, in LA trying to get his film Cleaver produced, happened upon a gift suite in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The quintessential amoral mobster, Chris was nonetheless blown away at the excesses and lavishness of the whole affair– even Ben Kingsley’s excuses were not enough to make the idea palatable. He ended up mugging Lauren Bacall to get her goodie bag.

So what we have here are pampered, overpaid, attractive celebrities being showered with thousands of dollars worth of free swag for showing up for an event they were going to already. It got so bad the IRS had to get involved.

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway up in Park City. At one time, it truly was as founder Robert Redford intended, an anti-Hollywood celebration of the independent filmmaker. Now it’s just another bloated tinseltown event, replete with goodie bags and gift suites.

But not this year. In yet another example of the WGA strike having some unintended good effects (i.e. killing award shows), the celebrities who have shown up in force in Park City are steering clear of conspicuous decadence, eschewing the free $1000 sunglasses and weekends at La Costa. According to an eye-opening column in Variety, celebs are actually saying no to swag this year. When there are so many of their industry peers out of work, grabbing freebies could only make them look bad.

Top celebs, it seems, have a case of swag backlash. They’re being more circumspect this year, eschewing obvious gift suite appearances and the attendant phalanx of photogs.

This is a very, very good thing. If this pang of modesty can only be sustained after the WGA strike ends it may lead to other good things, like reasonable acting fees and thus better movies. But wishful thinking aside, I still had the original baffling question: Why the hell do all these companies go through all the trouble? Why reward a bunch of privileged actors with high-end consumer goods, things they should be paying full retail for? Well, the article finally gave the the answer– and then some:

On one level, it’s a sort of philanthropy to provide cash-poor indie producers with events they couldn’t otherwise afford. More importantly, it’s the only way to assure sponsors that their products will have a shot at name-brand actor adjacency.

Companies like Fendi or Gucci or Patek Phillippe– basically, anybody who advertises in Vanity Fair or W– get something when they give away swag. They get a celebrity using or wearing their product. The giveaway moment, when the attractive company rep hands the Rolex to the A-lister, is usually photographed, and the fact is disseminated to counter staff and high-end service providers from Manhattan to Santa Monica (“Oh, you should try this one. You know, Naomi Watts wears it”).

Generally it all looks like a fairly Showbiz-style relationship: You use us, we use you, everyone’s happy. But wouldn’t you think luxury goods and services sort of sell themselves? After all, the general public knows them fairly well through ads in high-end magazines and event sponsorship. Why would they need to cut into their profit margin by giving away what they should be selling? Why are elite companies as deferent to celebrities as the average velvet-rope gawker?

It’s because Celebrity has become just that powerful.

Celebrities are the subject of obsessive media scrutiny of historic proportions. One only had to watch the behavior of the paparazzi when Britney Spears had her big 5150 melt-down a few weeks back to watch this obsession made plain. The pack of photographers tracked her every move from house to ambulance with an animal intensity, focused on the goal of “capturing” their wigged-out prey. It was beyond a wolf-pack: it reminded me of a school of fish, moving and thinking as one, mindless reflex, flashing strobes rather than scales.

They do it for us. They do it because we’ll buy the pictures and watch the videos and talk about them and ask for more. And I’m not just talking about Jane Haircurlers in the check-out line at Winn-Dixie or Joe Office-Gossip downloading stuff from TMZ.com. The well-off are just as obsessed– Perhaps more, because from where they are, celebrity lifestyle becomes a matter of status.

It’s all excess, and excess is not good for anyone. It is especially bad for the art of filmmaking. So I’m going to put out a big attaboy for the stars and the celebrated who have decided to back away from the Gift Suite, to not pick up the Goodie Bag. I hope the new attitude lasts, and spreads.

–Skot C.

It can be an annoyance to watch a new show establish itself: it’s sort of like watching someone fill a bookshelf or assemble a model railway. Protagonist goes here, primary and secondary motivations go here, antagonist goes here, mysterious strangers go over there: Okay, plug ‘er in!

This show absolutely depends on a working knowledge of all three Terminator movies to fully make sense. The events depicted take place between the second and third installments. And of course the most notable twist in the canon: the Terminator sent to protect John Connor from the bad SkyNet-dispatched robots is a sporty, teenage-looking girl version, rather than the Hummer-sized Schwarzenegger model.

I’m already feeling sort of sorry for John Connor: He’s got a mother that is a caricature of the overprotective parent– even worse, one familiar with guns and such. And instead of the surrogate father-figure from the movies, he’s got a robot looking out for him who looks hot enough to make out with. Hopefully, when he’s not on the run from Terminators and preparing to deliver mankind from Armageddon he’s getting as much therapy as he can.

Okay, why not a father-figure? Times have changed, and the subtle societal expectations that made the older configuration inevitable been displaced with newer, different ones. We’re now living in the era of the Strong Girl. Notice I didn’t say “Strong Woman.” I’ll actually go one step further and call this the “Heroic Cheerleader” era.

Why cheerleaders? I can’t call it a coincidence: it’s a solid trend. I can track it right back to it’s originator: Joss Whedon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer carries considerable cultural resonance now, but back in 1992 the very name on the script was a bit of a giggle. “Imagine, a ditzy cheerleader staking the undead!” Mr. Whedon, a third-generation television writer with a college background in feminist studies, caught a trend everyone else was ignoring—except in the world of comics, where teen heroes of either gender have been staples since the sixties.

And yeah, this trend could be tracked all the way back to the 1979 film Alien and subsequent installments which featured a tough, no-nonsense Ellen Ripley who took on beasties in four movies. The fact Joss Whedon wrote the fourth film Alien Resurrection is no coincidence. But strong women in films is not really new: it’s the fixation on the teen variety that strikes me as odd.

A strong, agile teenage girl who could kill monsters single-handed was such an intriguing idea it surpassed the rather flawed film version and made it to a TV series, where the rest is television history. But still, it should be noted the movie Buffy Summers was a cheerleader, and the television version played by Sarah Michelle Gellar was a Sunnydale High rah-rah for one episode (and her sister Dawn was too). True, the series got away from the original ironic joke built into the name and explored areas of dark humor and Gothic horror, but the mold was cast. And it should be noted that Cameron, the girl Terminator from the new series, is played by Summer Glau. She played River Tam in Joss Whedon’s “Firefly”– another fairly unsocialized killing machine, pretty much the same character in most respects.

The trend moved down the age bracket when “Buffy” was ending it’s run. “Kim Possible” is another series about an auburn-haired high-school cheerleader who saves the world on a regular basis. It is very similar to “Buffy” in rough details: in many ways hyper-capable Kim is just a Disneyfied take on Whedon’s superhuman Slayer. And, if conspiracy theories are to be believed, not without a dark streak of it’s own.

Among the flock of ABC’s “Heroes” is Claire Bennett, a cheerleader who discovers she in completely invulnerable to injury and cannot die. She uses this new-found ability to appropriately heroic effect. The parameters of Claire’s character are mostly indistinguishable from Buffy Summers or Kim Possible, if more self-reflexive in tone and much darker. Claire was the series’s first “breakout” character: “Save the Cheerleader. Save the World.” was an early tag line.

Again: why cheerleaders? Why that particular high school clique? Why not heroic color guards or drama geeks or 4H members? As Daniel once noted, we never really leave High School: the cliques and social structures of our formative years still permeate us, and our lives are largely patterned by the social values picked up there.

If Cheerleaders represented the elite of high school society, why do we feel a need to impose additional moral superiority upon their fictional representations? I have several theories:

1. The elevation of the Cheerleader is simply a modern embodiment of the Victorian elevation of young womanhood, the externalization of virtue a mirror of the internalized virtues of chaste femininity.
2. It’s an inevitable pendulum-swing from the male-heavy Die Hard-era of action-flicks and buddy pictures.
3. A reflection of a larger societal correction addressing the empowerment of young girls, much like the academic-athletic initiatives under Title IX.
4. It may be a prurient excuse: Making Cheerleaders heroic allows the general public to simultaneously admire and ogle them.

Whatever the reason, the trend is apparently now firmly in place. The very fact the new Terminator is in girl form is now practically to be expected. Her intro was eased in a bit by Kristanna Loken’s turn as the advanced-model cyborg from Terminator 3. But, at least to me, that particular nemesis, with her expensive-looking suit, severe bun and silver Lexus, reminded me of a homicidal Realtor. And homicidal Realtors are a genre for another day.

–Skot C.

The Lead Compass: The Golden Compass took in just under $26M when it opened last weekend. It’s probably headed to the basement as more holiday movies, I Am Legend in particular, open. For a film that costs upwards of $180M to make that’s south of bad news.

A few months ago I bemoaned the fact that all the fantasy epics seem to be of British pedigree. Compass was most likely greenlighted because studio heads believed it hewed to the successful paradigm: English fantasy novel + Lots of Effects = Box Office. But seriously, is Phillip Pullman (who wrote the book the big ol’ bomb was based on) anywhere near the recognition level as J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, or even C. S. Lewis? Nope.

Actually, maybe the problem isn’t the fact that studios imagined English fantasy books-turned-movies are automatic hits: maybe it underperformed because the original author didn’t have initials for his first name. P. N. O. Pullman doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

Cut! Print! Don’t Strike the Set! If the WGA was hoping for a united front with other trade guilds against the AMPTP, they can forget it. The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) is moving to renegotiation with the studios with all due haste.

The DGA is not just comprised of the guys with megaphones and jodhpurs; they also represent the army of Assistant Directors, 2nd ADs, 3rd ADs and UPMs who control on-set production. The DGA has historically been extremely eager to reach accord with the studios: The only time they ever struck, back in 1987, the action lasted less than a workday.

Is the WGA working it’s way onto a limb? Hard to say.

End-Cap of an Era: The Mitchell Report on steroid use in Major League Baseball has been released. The neologism I noticed starting to pop up during the middle of the 2007 season– “The Steroid Era,” as in “The report effective provided a summary of the abuses of the Steroid Era”– has finally arrived.

Look for fleeting appearances of the next new coinage– I’m going to go ahead and guess “The Post-Steroid Era”, as in “Thank God we’re in the Post-Steroid Era now”—- to be media-inserted in the next few months, at least before Spring Training.

British Secret Cinema: I stumbled upon a film due to release in the UK Christmastime: St. Trinian’s. It chronicles the madcap adventures of a boarding school full of uncontrollable, incorrigible girls. The film features Colin Firth, Mischa Barton and the shortest pleated skirts this side of The Pussycat Dolls. Sure, it’s middle-brow entertainment, but nobody does middle-brow better than the Brits.

Question 1: This is apparently the sixth St. Trinian movie, from a series started in 1954. How the hell did you blokes in the UK keep this under wraps for so long?

Question 2: When does it land in the US?

–Skot C.

Hawley’s unique and rather starkly honest observation: He points out that if the residual system for writers is curtailed or eliminated, the result will be the virtual elimination of middle-class careers.

It’s not the richest members of the guild who will suffer – the A-list writers and script doctors – it’s everybody else. Writers who earn their living staffing, or writing smaller films will find their incomes cut dramatically. The majority of writers in Hollywood are middle class. If the residual system as we know it disappears, we will see a writers guild that looks much like the rest of America, with one percent of writers controlling 90 percent of the wealth. This elite tier of creators will continue to realize huge profits, even in an Internet-only world, through a combination of giant script fees and profit sharing. But without residuals, without fair compensation paid each time their work airs, TV staff writers and the screenwriters of smaller movies will find themselves back in the corporate cubicles, just another employee punching a clock and dreaming of a better life.

This is a remarkable insight. It absolutely acknowledges that star writers like John August and Akiva Goldsman, those in the elite top crust of screenwriters who generally write every major motion picture, will continue to do well with or without WGA support. The gap between star “have” writers and wage-earning “have-not” writers will become a gulf. The WGA, in fact, is one of the few entities in Hollywood enforcing something like equitable profit sharing at levels relatively low in the food chain. Hawley is not just interested in getting a fair break from the studios: he wants to make sure the big fish don’t eat the small ones.

It also illuminates a question I’ve had about the WGA’s core issue: when did the current residual system start? I can’t imagine that back in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” writers enjoyed the long-lasting benefits of the structured deal they do today. Ben Hecht, Charles Brackett or Herman J. Mankiewicz probably got one check per screenplay (Two if they scored an advance), then they moved on to the next gig. I’m just going to put that question out there: maybe someone else has a definitive answer.

Anyway, Noah Hawley, before making the making a fine, significant point above, nearly blew it with the standard-issue “What about the Internet profits?” theme.

When first-run movies are released for purchase online the same day they premiere in theaters. On this day, all media will effectively be transmitted to your home by computer. There will be no such thing as a screenwriter or a television writer. We will all be Internet writers. And once that happens these media conglomerates will become, in a very real sense, the sole author and owner of our work, entitled to 100 percent of the revenues they generate.

According to this idea, in the near future stuff will stop coming out of your TV. The studios will all become webcasters and all the writers will be fired– replaced by, I suppose, robots.

The problems with Internet content-delivery structures are so profound it amazes me people still hang up over it. Almost all for-profit media centers on control over content: the theatrical release, the scheduled broadcast, the CD release, the DRM-controlled music file. The Internet is fully open, and as such is anathema to this scheme. Take, for example The Podcast Network: Box Office Weekly. Quality, thought-provoking content put out by two schmoes– who should be doing something more productive with their time– for no pay whatsoever.

The leading internet content delivery scheme is personified by YouTube. I do not think Hollywood really understands YouTube. Imagine if YouTube was an actual cable channel. This channel broadcasts anything it wants to, from any source they want. They tape shows from other networks and broadcast them. They also show any other kind of content they want, from camera-phone rants to pirated theatrical movies. And they really don’t care if they make any real money doing it, and they don’t care if the content originators get a dime. In fact, people are clamoring to get on the air for free.

The studio system is patently unready for this paradigm. Until a truly workable content-control scheme is developed, the Internet will continue to be great for viewers and terrible for studios.

The biggest danger to television these days seems to be the strike itself. Ratings are falling, the networks are refunding advertisers, and Rupert Murdoch, the cuddly teddy bear who runs Fox, is calling the writers out. Why shouldn’t he? He has “American Idol,” that writer-free ratings juggernaut, to get his network through this rough patch.

–Skot C.

TPN Audience Survey 2007

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN TELL YOU’RE READING TOO MUCH STRIKE COVERAGE.

• IF YOU NO LONGER CRINGE WHEN YOU SEE AGENTS REFERRED TO AS “TEN PERCENTERS,” YOU’RE READING TOO MUCH STRIKE COVERAGE

• IF YOU DON’T MAKE ANY DECISIONS WITHOUT FIRST CHECKING WITH NIKKI FINKE, YOU’RE READING TOO MUCH STRIKE COVERAGE

• IF YOUR FAMILY TREE IS A STRAIGHT LINE, YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK

But I think the simplest, best explanation for why these guys aren’t turning out WILL IT FLOAT segments comes from Bill Scheft, writer and union rep. Why can’t the signs be this eloquent?

…Quickly, lest you think we are a bunch of spoiled brats just looking for a raise, the big issue, money from original content shown on the Internet and other new media, is our way of replacing the money we are losing over the disappearing residuals. Residuals are not a bonus. They are the way writers live when they are between jobs. The standard writers contact is up for renewal every 13 weeks. You can have a five- year contract, but they can let you go every 13 weeks without paying you any more as long as they give you a month’s notice. That is the deal we all enter into. There are 12,000 writers in the guild. You need to make $30,000 a year in guild earnings to keep your health insurance. Last year, 6000 didn’t reach that figure. Half.

I have been lucky enough to have a job for 16 years. That simply does not happen. So this is what we are fighting for. Believe me, we would love to be in the office, writing fun facts, actives with Rupert, illegally doctoring footage or downloading porn, but this is the frontline fight for all the other union contracts that come after us. The late night writers are the first ones affected by a strike, and the ONLY ones who will never recoup the money we lose because we do 10 times as many new shows per year as any drama or sitcom. But we go out in support of our fellow union members and pray this thing ends soon.

One more thing. To a man, all of the writers are deeply concerned about the collateral damage if we stay out too long. We think of the 150 people who work at the Late Show whose fight this is not and believe they will be taken care of. They are all embarrassingly supportive of us. No one any more so than Dave. It is quite humbling.

Sorry to be so serious, but this is serious business… I felt you were owed as much of an explanation as anyone outside the negotiation room can give.

-daniel k.

I don’t follow this particular show, but much like High School Musical I’m kind of in awe of it. It’s got that hyperactive Disney synergy going. “Hannah Montana” hinges on a cute enough premise: Miley Cyrus plays Miley Stewart, a tweener who maintains a secret identity, that of superstar singing sensation Hannah Montana. Miley’s real-life dad Billy Ray Cyrus plays Miley’s real-life dad Robbie.

There are a few oddments about this show. it’s one of the very few left on American television that features a laughtrack. Miley Cyrus is a very charming young lady, but has rather painfully obvious acting limitations, mugging and flat-delivering with a Mike Nesmith-like soft Texas drawl. The show provides Miley/Hannah with Lilly, a best friend/Foil/Straight Man played by Emily Osment. She’s Haley Joel (The Sixth Sense) Osment’s sister, and although her character’s probable purpose in the show is to prop up Miley Cyrus she generally acts circles around the titular star.

(God, am I really picking on a fifteen-year-old? Sorry, but as much as I’ve seen the show it’s the only dissonant note in an otherwise perfectly Disney-like show on a channel populated with much more polished child actors.)

However, Miley Cyrus’ acting abilities must not matter: The show is a huge hit, with ancillaries second only to HSM in their pervasiveness and profitability. The Hannah Montana concert tour was so popular it became something of a social barometer: tickets offered for $35 to $65 face value were snapped up by scalpers (oh, sorry: “ticket brokers”) and were fetching up to $1500. The press had a good time excoriating both the heartless scalpers and the overindulgent parents.

Anyway, back to the weird thing. I was watching “Hannah Montana” in my office out for the corner of my eye, while I busied myself with other stuff, when a close-up of Larry (”Curb Your Enthusiasm”) David appeared. I thought I sat on the remote control and the tuner rolled over to HBO. But there he was, with his two real-life daughters, waiting in vain for a table in a posh LA restaurant. Hannah breezed in (You can tell it’s her and not Miley Stewart because Hannah sports a long wig with highlights). She air-kissed the maitre d’ and got seated immediately.

Larry David then did his whiny Larry David thing, and one of his real-life daughters complained “I’ll bet Uncle Jerry could have gotten us in!”

Is it just me, or will none of this register with the kids who typically watch this show?

The whole cameo was so off-putting and stuck out so crudely it begged explanation. There’s only one reason this exceedingly strange nexus occurred: Larry David’s daughters are big fans, and a walk-on cameo for the two on their favorite show is the celebrity equivalent to taking the kids to ride the teacups in Disneyland.

–Skot C.

I’m going to take a viewpoint and elaborate on it. I do not necessarily hold this viewpoint, but I think any reasonably intelligent person can see both sides of any argument and defend either effectively. It’s Speech and Debate stuff, straight from high school. But even the most cursory browse of the blogosphere reveals that even these rudimentary debating skills are truly a lost art.

Dan has agreed to follow up with a counterpoint article.

—

RESOLVED: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) should take this opportunity to crush the Writer’s Guild of America. Lock out WGA members, force the hyphenates and showrunners (executives with memberships and allegiances in both camps) to renounce their Guild cards, and encourage the creation of a new writer’s union based on objective literary skill.

There are several reasons why this would be an excellent idea for everyone concerned: Writers, producers, and consumers of entertainment.

• Just looking at television I have to ask: What is a writer’s job? For scripted television, it’s crafting scripts based on concepts and ideas put out by staff writers and show executives. Think about the best television episodes you’ve ever seen. Were they written by the show’s creators and staffers, ones who not just write the season story arcs but have a hand all creative aspects of the program? Chances are the answer is yes.

Hiring a Guild writer to create a TV script is a division-of-labor issue: If the staff could write every episode of a show, they probably would. Some do. Late-night shows certainly do.

• Staff writers and showrunners are the compromised players in this labor action, the loose-cannon heavy-hitters who choose to side with either the studio or the Guild. At this point, many well-known names are joining the picket lines, among them Marc Cherry (”Desperate Housewives”), Seth McFarland (”Family Guy”) and Shonda Rhimes (”Grey’s Anatomy”). Steve Carrell decided not to cross the picket lines, and production of “The Office” shut down, with the last new show airing next week.

As much solidarity as they’re showing, They’re ready to bolt back to their desks pretty damn quick:

For now, they’re staying off the job — and writing is out of the question until a settlement is reached. But, said one showrunner who was at the powwow, “We will gladly return to our (showrunner) jobs the day that the producers return to the negotiating table.”

NOT if the strike is settled, NOT even if an agreement is reached, but as soon as the reps sit in the same room. Solidarity!

The people who add value to scripted television, those who make television shows compelling and interesting, are half in both camps. If they no longer hired Guild writers, I’m actually not sure of the quality would suffer much.

The showrunners’s dilemma turns one of the arguments for the strike on it’s head. Over and over again, I’ve read how the WGA represents creativity and artistic endeavor, and they’re up against Ivy League executives who see it all as widgets. But the truly creative entities in television are to a large extent hyphenates and showrunners, executives in their own right. These executives create and make art, and hire writers for the heavy lifting.

• What does hiring a Guild signatory do for both parties? For the guild member, it’s a guaranteed pay scale and dental insurance. For the producer, it’s just a guarantee the writer has at least one sold script under their belt, and they can be generally trusted to finish the job without going on a week-long bender with the up-front money. Generally. Doesn’t seem much of a deal on the producer’s end, does it?

• As motion pictures go, I once read that there are only about 200 writers who make a full-time living writing features. Studios always tap the same proven talent pool when they assign writers to projects (this is a different story with spec scripts, of course).

But most movies are crap.

Anyone with an informed opinion on films seem to think most of the innovative ideas are being put into independent films. Non-union productions, mostly from spec scripts, seem to be the leading edge of contemporary cinematic expression.

If we want better movies, isn’t there some wisdom in decapitating the status quo and giving independent films and independent writers a stake in the game?

• Writing screenplays isn’t rocket science. Buy Final Draft, read through Syd Field’s book, and give it a try if you don’t believe me. In fact, I’d venture the more formulaic you can get your story, the better chance it has of not only selling but reaching a wider audience.

Anyone standing outside show biz looking in sees the WGA much differently than those in the business do. They’re the first stumbling block to a film career, an often-insurmountable barrier between the studios and the aspiring writer. They’re Hollywood’s immune system.

(Not that Hollywood doesn’t NEED and immune system. My recent visit to LA confirmed the old joke: EVERYBODY has a script.)

• This leads to an old Guild defense of the system: Studios aren’t writing schools, so why should they waste resources on untried talent when they can hire a Guild writer?

The answer: Maybe this whole writing school thing is something studios should consider.

If the big players can self-regulate movie ratings through the MPAA, they can certainly finance an entity to vet and certify independent writers based on merit and skill. I’m just spitballing here, but I envision something like a minor league farm team for wordsmiths. Someone who is keen on screenwriting can submit material to this entity, where it is evaluated. Crummy writers are asked to come back next season. Barely competent ones can be tried out with award shows and direct-to-DVD movies. Better ones can qualify for basic cable TV and cheapo genre pictures. And so on up the food chain.

This may not sound much different than what is already in place, but I can’t help but think objective, sound quality control on the outset will, in the end, make better entertainment. And better entertainment will be more eagerly consumed, and that rising tide will lift all boats. If Los Angeles can insist on letter grades for restaurants to guarantee wholesomeness, why not do the same for screenwriters?

Remember: The primary purpose of a guild is to protect it’s own members. Quality and creativity are unspoken givens, not guarantees. A better, fairer, more meritocratic system will have the primary purpose of developing great writers and helping them reach their potential and their audience, to the benefit of all.

—

Well, there it is. Flame away.

–Skot C.

But this meeting was in the afternoon, and I was in town mid-morning. So I put on my blogging journalist hat and looked around to see what effect the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike was having on the city at large.

A cruise by CBS Television City on Fairfax and Beverly confirmed a sizable picket line of writers outside the gate. They looked determined and well-motivated. Whether this extra determination originated from the passionate belief in their cause or the extra attention they were getting I leave as an open question.

After lunch (at Pink’s on La Brea: “Chili cheese dog, hold the onions, I have a meeting”) I stopped by a place I love to visit whenever I have an opportunity: Hollywood Book and Poster on Hollywood Blvd. They have a nice selection of one-sheets and lobby cards, and a gigantic collection of film and TV scripts they repro and sell. I asked the fellows behind the counter if the sudden lack on new scripts is going to affect their business. Turns out they move a lot of classic movie scripts and already-broadcast TV, so it won’t affect them for a while.

The next stop was the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset and Fairfax, and there I struck gold. EVERYBODY was either working on a script on their laptop or reading one, sometimes aloud. (Hats off, by the way, to CB & TL for free wifi access.) I rudely asked a few people if they were willing to give up some opinions on the WGA labor action and was rebuffed a few times (one guy mumbled “Err…guh… gotta meeting,” folded up his laptop and skeedaddled). But a pair of writers working on a manuscript were willing to share quite a few opinions:

• The standard “Producers are screwing writers on the ancillaries” argument. This is the official line, and is a perfectly legitimate one at that.

• A frustration that the studio decision-makers are widget salesmen from Harvard Business School, not creative types, and thus lack a willingness to back truly creative material. This is really old argument, Originally leveled at Sam Goldwyn and his ilk.

• An interesting angle: Some producers are sidestepping having to hire writers at all. They purchase content through outside companies, LLCs who in turn internally hire writing talent and sell the finished written product. Selling the product, not the service.

When I finally made my meeting with the Veteran Producer in his lovely office on the Strip, the conversation about the WGA stoppage continued (When I mentioned I was on the thirteenth draft of a feature-film script, he said, half-jokingly, “You’d better stop working on it!”).

When I told him I solicited opinions at the CB & TL on Sunset and Fairfax he laughed heartily, as only a Veteran Producer can. “Those guys are all posers! There probably wasn’t one WGAw member in the bunch!” I admitted the scene looked a bit theatrical, but then again so does everything in L.A.

The Veteran Producer had his own points to make, and lots of history to back it up– He was a Guild member during the ‘80 and the ‘88 WGAw work stoppages. We had an agreement on one rather arcane aspect of contention: Producers are downplaying DVD as a revenue stream, giving emphasis to online content, which in their opinion still needs to be quantified before the can determine revenue-sharing deals with labor. This is, to a certain extent, hooey: This allows producers to ignore very real DVD profits while drawing attention to non-existent internet profit structures. DVDs have an enormous install base and aren’t going anywhere, even with the advent of Digital TV in 2009.

Later, after the meeting was over, I burned off some time before my flight back to San Francisco by visiting The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I parked–for free!– on sixth and got into the museum for free as well. Los Angeles is one of the great cities in the world– because things like this can still happen.

Walking back to the car in the chill Fall air through Hancock Park by the La Brea Tar Pits, I was trying to untangle what I learned about the WGA stoppage. It was all sort of contradictory and vague. The WGA, after all, is an artisan’s guild: This is artisans versus patrons. Their strike is going to have a much different feel and effect than, say, an auto worker’s strike. It’s going to be compromised and contentious, both sides filled with collusion and weak on first principles.

I strolled by a pair of enormous concrete statues, life-sized depictions of the Mini-Cooper-sized giant ground sloths that once roamed the Los Angeles Basin. One, on it’s hind legs, looked out over the city. It’s day was over: The early Holocene world it belonged to had vanished. The lights of Park La Brea and Hollywood beyond reflected in it’s hollow cement eyes.

I think it was trying to tell me something.

–Skot C.

Martian Child

So, another John Cusack comedy-drama is gonna be released (set in Chicago, no less, so we can see John in his cinematic “natural environment”). From what I can glean, I believe I can wait for Martian Child’s cable premiere, DVR it, then watch it while writing or practicing the bass. But then I read the film was based on the novella “The Martian Child” written by David Gerrold.

Take out your Trek-O-Meters, kids!

Interesting to see that name pop up again. David Gerrold is justifiably famous for writing the “Star Trek: the original series” episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” one of that series most tightly scripted (and genuinely humorous) installments. A fan favorite. But Gerrold created some works just as significant and often overlooked a few years after the the original series was canceled in 1968: He penned the paperback books The World of Star Trek and The Trouble With Tribbles in 1973.

What’s so significant about that? Take it into context. In 1973, Star Trek barely existed. On television, it shared the same ephemeral presence as “I Dream of Jeannie” or “The Munsters,” stripped for syndication, chopped-up 16mm prints running daily on local channels between 4 and 7 p.m. There were no tie-ins, no action figures, and the first Star Trek convention took place at roughly the same time.

David Gerrold’s books were the first non-fiction publications that took Star Trek seriously. World was the first to report of the post-cancellation fan phenomenon, the first to examine the Star trek universe as creation of cultural significance. He used his inside knowledge of the show to sort of evangelize the show, and in doing so legitimized it’s fandom. And his book on the writing of “Tribbles” is still one of the most insightful looks at the seriously compromised business of network television writing ever written. It’s a bit dated (a lot of his problems came from using the wrong kind of typewriter) but if you ever considered penning a TV script it’s a must-read.

(I have a yellowed copy of The World of Star Trek on my desk right now which used to belong to my brother-in-law. Inside, I found an equally yellowed bookmark: An IBM punch card. Whoa.)

As Star Trek content availability went in 1973, these books were pretty much it. But they were the fulcrum point: The animated series premiered in 1973, then there were more conventions, more buzz, culminating in the first Star Trek movie in 1979. And the rest… is available at a video store near you.

It can be argued that the establishment of Paramount’s most profitable franchise owed quite a bit to his early advocacy. Therefore, I would have thought David Gerrold would have been booted up to a place of recognition, riding the franchising wave, but that sort of didn’t happen. During the height of the ST wave he mostly wrote sci-fi novels– though he was apparently the uncredited writer of the “bible” for “Star Trek: the Next Generation.” He managed to write a “Tribbles” sequel in 1974 for the animated series. He did NOT write the OTHER sequel on “Deep Space Nine,” which re-purposed footage from the original episode with the contemporary cast digitally inserted– “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Two to Beam Up” if you will.

But his absence of involvement in the Trek franchise juggernaut was always a bit of a puzzlement. Then again, Gerrold admitted he admired the famously cantankerous and litigious sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison, so maybe he emulated him in the wrong way.

So David Gerrold popped up again, as the autobiographical source of a John Cusack movie. He also wangled an executive producer credit, but then again so did Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, the actual screenwriters. I suspect a deferred-compensation deal.

About his only recent contribution to the Star Trek franchise is an episode on the online-only, semi-authorized “Star Trek: The New Voyages.” I can’t tell you if it’s great or it sucks: I can tell you I haven’t yet been able to play even one of the episodes. From what I was able to parse, it looks like a convincing argument AGAINST watching TV on your computer.

–Skot C.

“It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It’s completely different. But it’s a good idea, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to do.”

Lucas has also been toiling away at an animated series: “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” He is self-producing both projects, then is going to find a network home for them. He seems to believe these projects are going to be a tough sell:

“They’re saying, ‘This doesn’t fit into our little square boxes,’ and I say, ‘Well, yeah, but it’s “Star Wars.” And “Star Wars” doesn’t fit into that box.’”

I would offer he doesn’t have all that much to worry about. The built-in fan base for his stuff is so huge and loyal I’m sure he can cut any sort of deal he wants. Then again, there was 1992’s “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” which was a resounding, expensive failure.

So: More “Star Wars,” this time on TV. Gotta admit: Lucas is admirable for the extraordinary efforts he is taking to keep his franchise alive. I just wish he would think about doing something else. Which leads to one of my longest-standing rants: GEORGE LUCAS IS THE LUCKIEST GUY IN MOVIES. I’m hard-pressed to think of a fellow who has leveraged such a banquet of success from such a thin stew of original ideas.

George Lucas famously came from Modesto, California, born into a modest branch of the Lucas family. His better-off relations, at one time, owned most of Marin County. When he moved Skywalker Ranch into Lucas Valley after his Star Wars success it wasn’t just an expression of hubris: More like he was assuming the dominant role in his family.

He went to film school at USC, where he made a few films, but mostly he made connections, which is what the USC Film School actually teaches. He did make one notable short: “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB.” It won an award, which hooked him up with Francis Coppola, who financed THX 1138, the feature-film version of his 15-minute short. It wasn’t all that successful, but it was a feature film, and he now had a chip in the game.
Coppola hit it big, big, big the very next year with The Godfather, a rising tide which also lifted Lucas’ boat. Riding that tide, and with Coppola’s help again, he made American Graffiti, an unabashedly autobiographical film depicting the fun times he had hot-rodding in Modesto– ten years previous.

(I always thought it rather telling that even though Graffiti was set in California’s Central Valley, he shot the whole thing in Marin County. I doubt he ever set foot in his old hometown after film school. I’m originally from Stockton, about 20 miles north of Modesto: I don’t blame him.)

Anyway, American Graffiti lined up perfectly with then-current Boomer sensibilities, hitting the front curve of 1970s nostalgia craze– and it was a massive hit. After that, George Lucas had carte blanche. His next project he plainly admitted came from things he drew in the margins of his high-school notebooks, sci-fi adventures full of robots and aliens and space dogfighting (Kapow! Whiz!) Add a plot lifted from one of the Samurai films in vogue during his Film School years (Kurosawa’s Kakushi-toride no san-akunin [The Hidden Fortress], 1958) and voila! Star Wars.

Of course, directing was never George Lucas’ true genius. His is producing: Organizing productions, collecting unique ideas, getting the right talent, developing the technology, and putting out tightly branded, all-encompassing multimedia entertainment. He may not have invented franchise filmmaking, but he certainly perfected it.

With the power and glory and money that is the George Lucas Film “Empire”, one would think he could be bankrolling new projects, starting new franchises, rather than servicing his 30-year-old, fully played-out one with TV-level offerings. The continuation of Lucas’ “Star Wars” output is, in my opinion, also continuing evidence of the limitations of his creative vision.

So George, ol’ neighbor of mine: If you’re reading this, and are hard-pressed for material I have some new ideas you need to look at. A lot of us do.

–Skot C.

“I look forward to busting my a**,” James said in announcing the new pact.

I’ve got seriously conflicted emotions on this. On one hand, I’m really excited to see him on TV again. On the other hand, I’m deeply let down. Jesse James has a complicated place in my television-watching heart.

Jesse James came up with “Monster Garage,” a series on the Discovery Channel where he would ride herd on a bunch of gear-heads to build an extremely imaginative vehicle project in a week– stuff like a golf-ball sweeper made from a Porsche, a hot dog cart/drag racer, and a cop car that does donuts– not skidding donuts, real ones with sprinkles.

Loved his show– cause I’m a gear-head myself. I’m not a great car-builder or customizer like Jesse or the folks he had on his show, but I’ve been working on cars since I was 15 and I consider myself a pretty decent mechanic. And “Monster Garage” was a mechanic’s show.

In fact, I’m writing this with hands still spotted with gunk: I just rebuilt my carburetor this evening. My dear old truck, a 1956 Chevy Panel Delivery, spent all Friday pissing me off, stalling at inopportune moments, like on the freeway. I thought it was something to do with the fuel delivery system, so I got a US$15 rebuild kit and took the single-barrel off the intake manifold. A few hours later, I bolted it, fully rebuilt, back on and tested it out. No stalls.

Like I said, loved the show and it’s real, seat-of-your-pants, American can-do attitude. And Jesse was– I can only describe him as just as real. He would get pissed off and yell at people, throw firecrackers when he got bored, bitch at the camera when people let him down, yet had the raw charisma to come off as the coolest guy that ever hosted a Basic Cable show.

(I will, however, fault him for popularizing loud customized motorcycles, the favored toys of the local idiot contingent and bane of my quiet suburban existence. But I blame the Teutul clan, the family of bike builders featured on the series “American Chopper” even more, because their collective screeching idiocy matches the observed local norm.)

And what’s even more interesting was how Jesse James decided to cut out on “Monster Garage” after five successful years. Somewhere around the third season of his show he met movie star Sandra Bullock and married her, leaving his wife and mother of his two kids. I know I’m gonna have a lot of people upside my head for saying this, but I don’t disapprove of him doing that. We’re talking about Sandra Bullock here. Every married couple has one of those lists of people it’d be OK to leave their spouse for. I’ll bet Ms. Bullock was on a lot of those lists.

The last season of “Monster Garage” was, simply, dull. Lots of uninspired vehicle creations, lots of field reporting. Jesse James was clearly phoning it in: He was either absent or barely present. He wasn’t even in the final episode, which ended up being half clip-show. One of the clips was an audio track of him talking about how bored he was with the show: “I just want to do…nothing.”

After the show wrapped, for about a year, he was doing just that: Nothing. In Malibu. With Sandra Bullock. On top of a large pile of money.

God, how I admired him.

And now he’s coming back. Why? I’m going to guess the Spike TV guys backed a large truck full of money to his house. A really, really large truck. Or Sandra Bullock got tired of him laying around the house, getting underfoot and setting off firecrackers when he got bored, and set up some meetings for him.

It’ll be great to see Jesse again on Spike TV, but part of me is going to be bummed out. I was overjoyed he got out of show biz– on the best terms I’ve ever heard of. Ever.

–Skot C.

I was getting some setup shots of the bride, and she was working on her pre-ceremony nerves by sucking on a can of what looked like an energy beverage. it turned out to be a small can of sparkling wine. It was Sofia, put out by Niebaum-Coppola vinyards and named after none other than my cinematic nemesis Sofia Coppola. I had to bite my tongue really hard when the lovely bride told me how much she liked Sofia and her movies. It was her day: why antagonize her?

To quote an MSNBC article:

Part of the plan has been to market Sofia not merely as premium wine without a bottle but as a clubgoers’ drink: ordered by name, easy to hold at a bar and ideal for resort poolsides where glass is a no-no. Niebaum-Coppola’s intention is to target drinkers of beer or alcopops, those fruity mixes like Smirnoff Ice that have supplanted wine coolers as the choice for sweet-palated drinkers.

Smart packaging, I have to admit. The cans even come with a cute little straw attached, so you can drink wine through a straw, a first for many grownups. It retails for US$20 for a four-pack of 187 ml cans. Eek.

Hey, she’s already gone into clothing and purses, why not booze? I tried some– as an experience, it sure beats watching her movies.

–Skot C.

The place is certainly venerable: I remember looking at the rafters above the projection booth at the building’s framework: huge, rough-sawn beams of old-growth redwood trees a thousand years old when they were cut, deep ruby red, naturally fire- and rot-resistant. Lumber like that is literally not available anymore.

The Vogue was cut loose by Regal (or whoever Regal became) and is now being operated by a non-profit organization dedicated to the continued operation old movie houses.

This is commendable. It’s also strange.

Motion picture exhibition is definitely commerce: Your movie ticket and tub of popcorn pay for the movie-going experience entirely. The industry and the public made the collective decision to go with multiplexes and let single-screens go the way of Vaudeville. There are too many reasons this had to happen, but most of all it just made too much financial sense for all three economic entities involved in the movie biz: Distributors, Exhibitors and Moviegoers.

Cue the wailing film purist, who bemoans the loss of the grand movie palaces and the total aesthetic experience of the old days. Ya know what? It wasn’t that great.

If I had a choice to see a classic film, say 2001: A Space Odyssey, in a big old movie palace or a multiplex, I would probably prefer the multiplex. The sound, acoustics, and visual presentation are going to be excellent and modern, for starters. Most big old theaters were built in the days of Academy format (4:3) movies and mono sound, and all the plaster gewgaws on the walls echo and reverb. Multiplex seats are going to be wider and more comfortable, and the seating is going to be steeply raked for good sightlines. Most old theatres were built on a legit-theater plan, with a big, gently sloped floor and and aisle down the middle.

I’ll throw in an exception to this: if this re-release of 2001 was going to be shown in 70mm, seeing it in a multiplex in this format would would be unlikely. Wide-film projectors in multiplexes are rare. Except IMAX, which is a different beast entirely.

The Vogues is a subsidized movie house, the only way it could survive the economic realities of the present. And some subsidization of movie venues is to be expected: The Cinematheque in Hollywood, and various art-center run screening rooms, do not depend on ticket sales. But I hope this is not a trend that continues: If the studios get wind they might have a tax-subsidized way to put films on screens it’s all over.

So yes, part of me is going to miss the splendor and architectural beauty the old movie houses provided as a complement to the feature. But I won’t miss the bad sightlines, echo-chamber audio and funky seats. That curtained box with the drink holder armrests and stadium seating you’re used to will provide a generally and reliably superior moviegoing experience. Now about those popcorn prices…

–Skot C.

Lo and behold, I found this in today’s Variety: Film impresario, comic-book artist and super-duper fan Todd McFarlane and Warner Bros. are indeed going to develop a new Oz movie. I don’t want to get a swelled head, but people– Like, show-business-type people– may ACTUALLY read this blog! Okay, that is somewhat unlikely, but indulge me. Quoting the Variety article:

McFarlane has a vision of Oz that is a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight. That was clear with a toy line he launched several years ago that featured a buxom Dorothy and Toto reimagined as an oversized snarling warthog. Josh (A History of Violence) Olson has something a little tamer, and PG, in mind.

“I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do,” Olson told Daily Variety. “The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are. There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark.”

Josh Olsen is referring to a line of “Twisted Land of Oz” figures put out by McFarlane. I’d post a picture, but it’s a bit raunchy. Alright, alright– You can check it out here.

Alright, not exactly what I had in mind, but “Harry Potter dark,” That’s just about right. Fans, start your stunt-casting! Anne Hathaway IS Ozma! Jim Carrey IS the voice (and “matchmove performer”) of the Scarecrow!

And If there are folks reading this, maybe I should pull down the Tom Cruise/Fearless Leader thing. Just good clean fun, people. L. Ron Rules!

–Skot C

ADDENDA: Opening this weekend: The Nanny Diaries, featuring Scarlett Johannsen and Paul Giamatti. The cast of Ghostly Americans, my imagined indy comic book film from this article. This is of course a coincidence. Or zeitgeist. Or just plain inevitable. –sc

Classic Hollywood romance Casablanca is to be remade – in an Indian setting.

The new version, entitled Ezham Mudra, will relocate the Humphrey Bogart film to contemporary south India.

Actor Suresh Gopi will play a restaurant owner who helps his lover, a Tamil separatist rebel fighting the Sri Lankan government, escape from India.

The director Rajeev Nath is a huge fan of Casablanca (1942). Aren’t we all. It was a quirky little piece of studio product with incredibly slick dialog and plot twists that can still tear your heart out. It tops all sorts of lists and casts a long, long shadow of influence to this day.

This new version is part of the long-standing on-again, off-again industry that is Casablanca remakes. (I’m only talking about remakes: The flick has been referenced, quoted, spoofed and parodied so much the very references have sort of lost their meaning.) It was already remade in India, in fact– a 1981 film called Armaan. It became American TV series in 1955 and 1983, the latter featuring David Soul as Rick and Scatman Crothers as Sam. The 1990 Pamela Anderson vehicle Barb Wire was a thinly disguised remake as well. A dreadful 1985 PBS Sci-Fi Movie called “Overdrawn At The Memory Bank” (featuring the late, and still missed, Raul Julia) mashed Casablanca into it’s plot so thoroughly it could be called a remake of sorts.

Alright, Bollywood is going to remake this Hollywood film– for the second time. I cannot for the life of me think of ANY example of Indian cinema that has been remade into a substantial-budget American film. This might be a culturally specific effect: Just taking Bollywood as an example (there are other forms of indigent Indian cinema) the stereotypical films tend to chaste, three-hour, all-singing, all dancing romantic musicals awash in unnatural colors and choreography. The basic plot structures of Western and Indian films tend to be roughly similar, but they hang a hell of a lot of extra bells, whistles, bangles and sequins on Bollywood films.

I think studio heads need to reconsider Indian cinema as a new source for remakes. We’re ready for chaste, all-singing, all-dancing romantic musicals awash in unnatural colors and choreography. No, I’m not talking about Dreamgirls or Hairspray or some other moribund Broadway reheated bus-tour fodder. (I didn’t see Hairspray yet, but I did see Dreamgirls. Interesting story, lousy songs. Eddie Murphy was fully justified walking out of the Academy Awards: He wuz robbed.) I’m thinking more along the lines of High School Musical. That modest TV movie did huge DVD and ancillary business, and it did it right in the heart of the desired youth demographic.

However, The powers that be here are moving in the opposite direction. India puts out an average of a thousand new films a year. That’s like three a day. It’s such a healthy film market Hollywood is trying to horn in. Aside from the usual dubbed Hollywood fare, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are making inroads to produce Hindi films in India. So we probably won’t see the creative sort of cinematic cross-pollination on this end anytime soon, only the financial kind: A percentage of the ticket money you laid out for Harry Potter and Spiderman 3 going to Mumbai.
The biggest sin in showbiz is being boring, and that’s boring.

–Skot C.

Even the crappy ones.

The Hollywood Reporter addresses this today with an anecdote about BLIND JUSTICE. Remember that? Crime drama on ABC a couple of years back, about a vision-impaired detective struggling to gain the respect of his peers? It ran 13 episodes and they shut it down. But Channel 6 in Ireland bought the show, and it took off. Even though they ran it in a late-night slot, it developed a following. And once the series was over, they started getting calls demanding more episodes. Tell us more, HR!

Clearly this was a drama that would have taken off in what is admittedly a fairly small market for the U.S. studios. But that same scenario seems to be repeated — albeit with minor plot changes — in TV markets throughout the world. The program bosses at Spain’s Telecinco, for example, say they would have had a hit with “LAX” had it not been canceled. CTV in Canada had a similar situation with “Studio 60″.

All these shows – popular in small markets, not enough revenue to keep them going. They say THE AVENGERS befell a similar fate. The last season without Miss Emma Peel was the most-watched in Europe, but because Americans weren’t watching, they had to cancel anyway. Americans were kicking in most of the production money.

The solution, and it does happen once in a while with popular science fiction shows, is for the fans to take over financing. If the Irish really want to, they can scrape up enough for another 13 episodes of BLIND JUSTICE. Maybe set it in Ballykissangel. Hey, how’s the blind detective gonna know? Aside from hearing sheep instead of traffic noise, it’s all the same to him.

This is the circumstance which forced British Airways to remove the cameo of Richard Branson, and the Virgin Airlines logo, from the prints of Casino Royale. It’s odd too when you consider the scenes of carnage on an airport runway that they left in.

“We screen all films before they’re used on our aircraft so that we can control the content of what is displayed,” the spokesman said on condition of anonymity, in line with company policy. “We have full control over what is shown.”

Paul Charles, a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, said was a shame BA felt the cut was necessary. He said Virgin made no changes to “Die Another Day” a Bond film featuring British Airways, adding his carrier’s policy was not to edit the movies it shows.

Oooooh, SNAP!

BA should consider themselves fortunate that Bond wasn’t seen drinking Virgin Cola, buying a CD at a Virgin Megastore or using the Virgin Dashboard Defibrullator. I wonder how BA felt about DIE ANOTHER DAY, in which the villian was a dashing billionaire modeled on Branson? I need to fly with those guys more often.

Hew Raymond Griffiths is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, and once count of criminal copyright infringement. He faces 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. It’s worth noting that they “made no financial profit from their activities.” In a way, this makes Griffiths Robin Hood, and the Justice Department the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Griffiths is 44, which admittedly is a little old for this kind of thing, but DrinkOrDie’s glory days were over a decade ago when they released Windows 95 a couple of weeks before Microsoft did. Further indication that the JD is late to the party:

Griffiths was also “an elder in the highest echelons of the underground Internet piracy community, also known as the warez scene,” statement continued. “He held leadership roles in several other well-known warez groups, including Razor1911 and RiSC. In an interview published in December 1999 by an online news source, he boasted that he ran all of DrinkOrDie’s day-to-day operations and controlled access to more than 20 of the top warez servers worldwide. In fact, Griffiths claimed to reporters that he would never be caught.”

1999! Poor guy had probably gone straight already, devoting his time to selling insurance and trying to get girls.

And sometimes, that same strategy guarantees it won’t soar either:

Just when Sony appears to have turned around its electronics business, another part of its sprawling empire, video games, is dragging down profits.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment company on Tuesday blamed the launching costs of its PlayStation 3 game console for much of the 5 percent drop in group net profit for the last three months of 2006 to 159.9 billion yen ($1.3 billion).

Later this year they have a third SPIDERMAN movie coming out, so Spidey will probably save the day again, even as the SPIDERMAN III game runs out of webbing and plummets to the jagged concrete streets below.

Credit Howard Stringer, the Welsh-American who runs Sony, for trimming a lot of the fat from the company. Had he not dropped several other profitable ventures in the last two years the profit margin would surely have looked much, much worse. Still, I can see him at the roulette table — “Why did I put those chips on 00? Damn!” By the way, Sony is lucky to have been able to put some chips on 007 this last year, so the metaphor is even twistier than I thought when I started.

The Hollywood Reporter says that when AI throttles up next week, it will have a few more companies on board to stoke the engines.

Nestle and Dreyer are the first of the promotional partners on board; the other four will be announced during the next few months. Promotional partners will have the right to run their promotions year-round, and different campaigns will run at different times during the year, though the major focus will be during the shows January-May run on Fox.

“We’re extending the interaction people can have during the show and off-air around the show,” said Keith Hindle, executive vp of licensing at Fremantle Media, which produces “Idol” with 19 Entertainment. “We’re trying to extend the life of the brand so it becomes a year-round property.”

This is in addition to the subtle participation of Cingular, Coca Cola and Ford, of course.

Nestle will become the official candy of American Idol. Rueben Stoddard! Paging Reuben Stoddard!

I wonder about the endgame here – American Idol is hugely successful and money-generating, but where can it go? I think, eventually, it will become a mega-corporation like Microsoft or Coca-Cola. One day, what’s good for American Idol will be good for America.

At the moment, though, it’s just a crappy talent show with too many sponsors. And not enough Dunkleman.

You can’t legislate the end of the “n” word. Nobody can ever tell a comic not to say something, it runs against a comic’s soul. Don’t take the “n” word out of your act because someone wants to ban it. Take it out because you are replacing it with actual comedy.

Point well taken, EB. I’m a white guy but from what I hear, African-American comics are as annoyed by this as you are.

As for Richards, I didn’t see the act, but from the response it appears the hecklers were right. It’s possible that Richards has been comedy-blind for years and we never realized it until now. Get help, Mike!

Mike Campbell, squeaky-clean CEO of REG, spoke at the Reuters Media Summit in New York Wednesday. Scoop for Reuters!

…Campbell said Regal might even refuse to show films from a studio that tries to cut the time between the theatrical and DVD releases in a way that undermines theater revenue.

“Studios spend a lot of money on their product, but we will push back hard if we believe that anything is threatening the well-being of our business,” Campbell said. “It’s not to anybody’s advantage to cut anybody out of the revenue stream,” he said.

Distributors, the ancestral rivals of exhibitors, have been floating the idea of shorter windows because it allows them to avoid having to coordinate two advertising blitzes for a property. It would save millions at the studio level, but cut into exclusivity for theatres. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Or rather, why spend $12 to look at the cow when you can look at a much smaller cow for $2.99? In your underwear?

Morgan Freeman is about to release a movie called 10 ITEMS OR LESS which will be available two weeks later on DVD. I’m betting it’s not playing at any REG theatres.

Personally, I will always prefer dressing up and seeing the big cow but maybe Mike is right. Especially if the movie is selling out – if you had a to choose between waiting a week or two versus renting it now and watching on your crummy home theatre… well, a window isn’t so bad. Maybe theatres could bring back newsreels and cartoons! That’d be cool.

Seinfeld star Michael Richards …has been banned from The Laugh Factory for repeatedly calling two African-American hecklers “n**gers” during a foul-mouthed rant onstage there earlier this month. The comedy club bosses now want him to pay for his ill-advised remarks… They want Richards to pay $6 million to charity for the six derogatory words he used on their stage.

Oh, curse me! I cannot take this release at face value. Neither can Skot. He sent me the item with this note:

It’s got to be collusion between Richards’ new high-powered PR flack and the Laugh Factory owners. Like everything in the business, it’s prearranged, the public face of a private deal. Richards pays through the nose– but to a charity: The Laugh Factory comes off like a selfless defender of racial harmony (if not free speech); Richards literally buys his career back.

I have to agree for a number of reasons. First, you don’t publicly call out the talent to the tune of 6 big ones without clearing it with them first. The Laugh Factory prides itself on its celebrity bookings, and you’re not going to see Jay Leno or Dane Cook going back there any time soon if they think they’ll get blindsided.

Secondly, that figure is really, really high. I can see Jerry Seinfeld affording it (as they said at the Jerry Stiller roast, “Seinfeld couldn’t be here tonight because he’s f***ing a model on a pile of money”) but Richards, his whole net worth is probably 6 million. So the figure is so high it can seem unreasonable if you’re sympathetic to Richards but high enough that you can cheer on the Laugh Factory for asking. And whatever he gives to charity, it’s a deduction.

Now lets blaze a trail into the dark heart of Cynicsville.

The seventh season of Seinfeld out on DVD, and it could use a little free publicity. Seinfeld doesn’t need the money, Louis-Dreyfuss has a successful sitcom, and Alexander, well, I’m not sure what he’s doing but I bet it involves voice-over and he’s not hurting for money. Richards may have taken a bullet for the team. It would raise the deeply sunken Michael Richards profile (so low that I had to use “Kramer” in the title instead of his real name) and beef up his share of royalties from DVD sales.

Side note: This year is kind of a new golden era of racism isn’t it? Between this incident, a fascinating cavalcade of campaign ads and Borat… well, it’s almost like living in the fifties all over again.

So anyway, to me the question boils down to this – is Michael Richards a racist, or is he cynically pretending to be one to make money?

I think I mentioned this yesterday, but I turn a little dark around the holidays.

(Side Note: Jesse Jackson is calling for a boycott of the Seinfeld DVD, which indicates the man is pretty hip to the ways of publicists. As if you didn’t know!)      

Bob and Harvey Weinstein, now of The Weinstein Company but formerly of uncontrollable Oscar machine Miramax, have signed an exclusive distribution deal with Blockbuster. The next Weinstein-produced movie that you want to rent, you won’t be able to get at 20/20. You can’t get it from Netflix. Well, you can but you’ll have to wait 3 years.

The deal doesn’t include DVD sales, because Blockbuster just doesn’t sell enough units for Bob and Harvey’s taste. Still, this is an interesting development. I don’t like it. All exclusivity deals do is limit availability, which ultimately tamps down revenues. Presumably the Weinsteins factored that into their negotiations. So – good for Blockbuster, good for Bob and Harvey; bad for you, the consumer. I bet Shakespeare wouldn’t be in love with this!

And then consider selling – Prudential Equity Group’s Katherine Styponias says that estimates for the upcoming FLUSHED AWAY and SHREK THE THIRD are too high. Then again, that kind of thinking was applied to LAST quarter, so if you know someone who is selling their stock on that advice, maybe lowball ‘em and scoop it up. Hell, I don’t know. If I had any stock savvy I’d be blogging from home instead of during slow times at work.

Jack Handey is the mastermind behind SNL’s DEEP THOUGHTS. He was on the show during the funny years.

First, there is a new Beatles album on the way. Sir George Martin (variously the 5th, 6th or uber-Beatle) is overseeing a bizarre remix album tied to the Vegas extravaganza LOVE. The stage show itself is the unholy offspring of Paul, Ringo and the Cirque du Soleil. The album is said to be like a Beatles reunion. As Ringo says, “George and Giles (Martin, George’s kid) did such a great job combining these tracks. It’s really powerful for me and I even heard things I’d forgotten we had recorded.”  Let’s face it though, Ringo has probably forgotten an epic amount of stuff, especially from the mid-to-late seventies.

Meanwhile back at the cradle of civilization, Eric Idle’s SPAMALOT has opened in London, attended by a quartet of Pythons. It arrives flushed with Broadway success and featuring Tim Curry as King Arthur. As always, the Pythons are refreshing in their candor:

“I just hope it’s going to be OK,” said Terry Jones, who directed the original film. “My mortgage depends on it.”

…and bracing in their cynicism:

“It’s one of the few times when we can actually talk to each other, make a few jokes, and count up the money,” (Michael Palin) said.

Eric Idle sums it up best: all you need is cash.

From the BBC:

The Follow Spot Theatre company, from Guiseley, was given permission to perform Blackadder after agreeing to give all its profits to Comic Relief.

John Kitching, who helped set up the group, contacted writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis directly. He said: “We are beside ourselves with joy to be quite honest.”

Blackadder, which starred Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny and Hugh Laurie, ran for four series between 1983 to 1989. In a TV poll in 2004, the comedy was voted the second best British sitcom of all time, behind Only Fools and Horses.

Mr Kitching said: “When I told the rest of our people they were all itching for a part. Unfortunately some people we had to let down but we have got a cast together which we think fits the bill more than adequately.”

The play, based on the fourth series Blackadder Goes Forth, runs at Guiseley Theatre until Saturday.

Mr. Atkinson’s popularity with the show partially explains how JOHNNY ENGLISH got greenlighted.

Fox-branded news, sports and other stuff can be expected from the sign for the next ten years, now that they’ve outbid NBC.

News Corp. will deliver at least three hours of live programming daily on the Panasonic Astrovision Screen, including an hour each of Fox 5’s “Good Day New York,” as well as Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” and “Fox Report With Shepard Smith.” The media giant said it also will deliver live feeds from Fox Sports, including Major League Baseball’s League Championships and NASCAR’s Daytona 500.

The remaining programming time on the screen, which operates from 7-2 a.m. daily, will be used as a promotional platform for News Corp. content and Panasonic products, as well as for public service announcements and third-party advertising.

Panasonic built the sign.

Will New Yorkers be thrilled to see Shepard Smith 20 times life size as they eat gyros on their lunch breaks? We have ten years to find out.

Advertising Age reports that the International Astronautical Conference this week will host a talk by J.H. Huebert, an Ohio attorney who will argue against the space-billboard ban.

 

The paper argues that from an aesthetic standpoint, similar forms of advertising already exist — on blimps or, in a sort of reverse scenario, the recent visible-from-above Maxim cover reproduction on a 75-by-100-foot patch of desert about 35 miles south of Las Vegas that was meant to be viewed on Google Earth. The law has never recognized a right to a view, the authors said, and there is not yet an international ban on space advertising.

Interestingly, among other opponents to this crazy scheme is the Outdoor Advertising Association of America; Nancy Fletcher, the president-CEO says “We believe in strict spacing between billboards on Earth; we don’t believe in billboards in space.” And it doesn’t get more outdoor than that.

Mike Lawson, a space-advertising Advocate and president of Techsphere Systems International, suggests that revenue from billboards could help the international space station. Wouldn’t it be easier to have the astronauts do commercials for Tang?

The article also give a brief rundown of famous product-placements in outer space, such as the 1996 stunt where Pepsi paid Russia to float a can outside the MIR space station, and when the producer of THE LAST ACTION HERO put their logo on the side of a rocket. In retrospect, projects which seem modest by comparison.

Pictured here is the star of UGLY BETTY, the show which is said to be in the running for most likely to pull in the most Euros. (Photo courtesy Variety.com)

Even in these troubled times, American television is one of our most successful exports. We spend more money, have bigger stars, and simply pump out a greater volume of the swill than other countries, and they’re buying it up. Especially hour-long drama, which is the most expensive television to produce but translates better than sitcoms. Comedy is such a tricky cross-cultural negotiation, don’t cha know? But you can take an episode of HOUSE, dub it into German and lose almost nothing except the wonder at Hugh Laurie’s flawless American accent. I wonder if they hired a British voice-over guy to do a flawless German accent?

Anyway, Variety reports that “some 11,000 program buyers and sellers hit the Cannes Croisette over the weekend for the 22nd annual sales bazaar, and those selling the creme de la creme of Yank shows are hoping to pry open a lot of pocketbooks…Since most of the key TV stations across Europe — think Germany’s RTL, France’s TF1 or Britain’s BBC — are big producers of their own fare, a decision to slot a Yank series in prime time is a coup for the U.S. seller in terms of both prestige and dollars.”

The new shows have been on for a month here, giving foreign buyers an idea of what the shows ratings are going to be like. So don’t expect big bucks for KIDNAPPED. The forecast looks good… the world entertainment economy is said to be reasonably healthy with advertising money.

The show brought back Grace, Lea, Mikey and Nikki had been evicted from the house (lucky bastards) over the course of the last series, but the producers brought them back, putting them in an adjacent house. Eventually Nikki was chosen to return to the main house.

Thing is, the public gets to vote on who gets kicked out of the house. And like on American Idol, each vote costs. It’s an extra revenue stream for the show. More than 2600 voters complained to Icstis, a British phone company watchdog, that they had essentially been promised that they could pay money to vote these people out permanently. They bought a service, and it wasn’t provided. Channel 4, the broadcaster, admitted liability, and while they were able to avoid a fine they did have to pay legal costs of almost $100,000. I’d give you the amount in pounds but it’s an American keyboard.

Every CEO of a company that has gone public admits that on some level, they wish they didn’t have to answer to the stockholders because it limits their ability to work creatively. You see where I’m going with that analogy, I trust.

The trans-national behemoth announced a new strategy for fighting DVD piracy in China – they are lowering prices and releasing movies sooner there. SUPERMAN RETURNS, which previously would have been priced at 80 to 90 yuan will instead sell as low as 14 yuan. It will also be in shops about 2 months before it is available here in the states. A pirate copy of Superman Returns will probably sell for 10 yuan.

Warner Brothers has realized that stopping film piracy is like trying to nail jell-o to a wall, and has decided instead to make their own, sweeter, better-packaged jell-o. I know it’s galling in theory – you’re competing with criminals on unfair terms they set – but practically speaking a lot of trade with China is similar to this. Ask the memory chip makers.

Mark Horak, WB’s home video guy for Asia and Latin America, says that WB’s sales will double in China this year. The margins will be lower but the volume will be greater. Everybody wins. And SUPERMAN RETURNS finally has a chance to see some… returns.

Over all, Viacom said Mr. Redstone’s salary would be reduced starting in 2007 to $1 million from $1.75 million, his $1.3 million in deferred compensation would be eliminated and a bonus paid if certain targets are met would be reduced to $3.5 million, from $6.1 million.

What the hell kind of CEO is that? He almost halves his salary. And this the same week that the JACKASS sequel opened, a cheap film that did really good business. Additionally he is trading in his 9.4 million in deferred compensation for 9.4 million in stock options, which will rise and fall with the success of the company. Viacom stock rose on these announcments 55 cents to $37.58.

Redstone’s chief problems now will come from other CEOs, who are plotting to kill him.

Captain Jack’s Back in the Action-Packed, Record-Shattering High-Seas Thrill Ride of the Year!
“Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” Includes Hours of Captivating Bonus Booty on a Double-Disc DVD
Distribution Source : Market Wire
Date: Tuesday – September 19, 2006

BURBANK, CA — (Market Wire – Sep 19, 2006) –  Today, everyone’s a pirate as the world celebrates International “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” and to kick off the rabble rousing, Disney Home Entertainment announces the highly anticipated DVD release of “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” The action-packed worldwide film sensation will make its Disney DVD debut on December 5th. Starring Johnny Depp as that mischievous, heroic rogue Captain Jack Sparrow, this epic adventure has taken audiences by storm. The film’s Theatrical opening weekend was the biggest in U.S. box-office history, and the high-seas Hollywood tidal wave continues with a worldwide box-office gross of over a billion dollars to date, making it Disney’s most successful movie of all time.

“Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” will be released as both a deluxe 2-disc Special Edition DVD set and as a single-disc DVD. The single-disc DVD features screenwriter audio commentary and the hilarious, never-before-seen “Bloopers Of The Caribbean.” The Special Edition features limited availability holographic packaging and includes all single disc features, plus a treasure-chest of bonus booty: a behind-the-scenes documentary; a Captain Jack featurette; a sword-fighting featurette; “Creating The Kraken” on the film’s stunning sea beast; “Fly On The Set” — an on-location view of filming; a featurette on the legend of Davy Jones; bonus program on the newly “re-Imagineered” Pirates of the Caribbean resort attraction; star-studded, red-carpet Hollywood premiere footage; producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s personal on-set photo diary, and more. Much of the bonus material is exclusive to this DVD release.

…Single disc: U.S. $29.99 (SRP), Canada $36.99 (SRP). 2-disc Special Edition: U.S. $34.99 (SRP), Canada $41.99 (SRP), from Walt Disney Home Entertainment.

…STREET DATE:             December 5, 2006

A gargantuan musical based on the LORD OF THE RINGS is looking for 20 Hobbits. The audition notice, as quoted by the BBC, says:

Potential applicants should be under 5ft 7ins (170cm) and aged 16-35. Hairy toes and feet are a “distinct advantage,” said producers.

This musical originated in Canada and costs about 13 million pounds ($25 million) to put on, and that can be considered a bargain when you look at the cast size and the special effects. The fake hair budget alone probably runs into the millions. Reportedly it was supposed to open in London but at the time there was no available theatre large enough. London’s Theatre Royal has finally opened up.

If I may take a shot at a cheap cultural stereotype, it should be noted that the book is said to be in for a reworking because Canadian critics found it too dull. Again, the book was too dull for Canadians.

Auditions are September 18th!

 

The figure was somehow smuggled into place this weekend and remained for 90 minutes before Disneyland thought police removed it. Presumably they are now testing the cloth for DNA samples, and before long they will be hauling Banksy, real name Graham Norton, away in the dead of night. Not long after Disney will consider and reject a Gitmo ride.

While I’m at this, I haven’t been to Disneyland in a while – have they done anything different to New Orleans square lately? Aside from adding Johnny Depp?

In the study, 69 children between the ages of 7 and 12 gave blood samples. Their pain levels were studied. Some were distracted by their mothers, some were allowed to watch cartoons and some were undistracted. The ones watching the cartoons were said to display the lowest pain levels. Undistracted children had pain levels 300% higher.

Mothering, such as gentle stroking and cooing, was apparently no match for Timon and Puumba. I took those names out of a hat by the way… I have no idea whether the kids were watching Bugs Bunny, Ren And Stimpy, or Fritz the Cat. I hope it was Fritz.

This study begs all kinds of interesting questions – if these kids weren’t already going to give blood samples, isn’t this just cruelty? If the mothers just kept at it, could they be as soothing as television? Would some programs, like say the news, AMPLIFY pain?

The most interesting question, of course, is if television is such an effective pain killer, what are the consequences of watching it 3-7 hours a day when you’re NOT in pain?

As Cameron knows, I’m an enormous fan of Mad Max. The first one. It’s a beautifully executed, visually rich and a deeply twisted revenge story. And it has been my favorite for years, even though when I first saw it in the late seventies it was dubbed! Yes, for some reason American International Pictures thought it would be better as an American Picture. Maybe they were afraid that we would be unable to penetrate the veil of Austrailian patois. So to me, Mad Max took place in a dystopian future where civilization was crumbling and the only survivors were FM Deejays.

For years, my friends and I searched for a tape of Mad Max with it’s original soundtrack. How excited we were when Skot’s grandmother said she had a copy, only to have our hopes dashed when we found that the movie she had was “Madame X.” The Australian Mad Max was our holy grail.

So years later, when I had matured and given up that holy grail in favor of the impossible task of finding a decent dry-cleaners, imagine my shock to run across a DVD of Mad Max at Fry’s Electronics, deeply discounted. Not only did it have soundtracks in Australian, American and for some reason French, it offered the option of widescreen or pan ‘n scan, a few brief documentaries, a resume of everyone involved AND a commentary track from director George Miller, pointing out all the tiny details like his weird but effective use of inflatable pop eyes in some of the quick cuts. (Check it out some time… it’s brilliant!) All of the sudden, everything I’d ever wanted to know about Mad Max was dropped into my movie-lovin’ lap.

I had a similar experience with Buckaroo Banzai, a movie which never shows anywhere anyway but when it does, it’s impossible to find a widescreen version. And now, I got one, plus deleted scenes which for years were only available in my own imagination.

Every time they release a movie I loved on DVD, an angel gets its wings.

Only its not as simple as that. I loved Mystery Men, the Ben Stiller movie about 2nd string loser superheroes. I know it’s not for everyone, but it was for me. It has a delicate chemistry, a magic that comes from putting brilliant comics together and letting them work. I thought Kinka Usher, the director, was a genius.

Until I heard him talk on the commentary track. He is so inarticulate, so worried about pissing off someone in the industry, that he winds up saying nothing for the whole two hours. His every observation is a variation of “Hank came up with that… it was a real good idea.” After hearing the track, I hated the movie.

And maybe that’s the problem… some movies absolutely do NOT need to have their details revealed. Some movies, the only thing keeping them watchable at all is your ignorance of how they are made, just like sausage and the law. If you love a movie, I urge you to wait at least ten years before you bust open the special features, or if you’re smart, wait for them to re-release it with a new commentary track, when everyone involved has moved on and they can look back without ruining anyone’s career. THAT’S when it gets interesting.

The magazine reports that Samsung’s BD-P1000 Blu-Ray player has a flaw in the noise reduction chip, which is resulting in an un-sharp picture. In fact, the quality is comparable (or slightly worse) than a conventional DVD. The good news is that it can be fixed without taking the player back, but the bad news is the fix probably won’t be available before September, and you’ll have to download it and burn it onto CD yourself.

Even more hilarious, from the article: “…the BD-P1000 player does not decode Dolby Digital in surround mode for the 5.1-channel analog outputs, and does not decode DTS for those outputs at all. In the review, I stated that it does… it’s clear that the player is simply folding down a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital source into the left and right front channels. …With DTS, however, the situation is more serious. The notes in the owner’s manual and Quick Setup Guide state that if you “play a DTS DVD disc, no sound will be heard.” …, what I got instead was a dangerously loud broadband hiss, much like white noise, in either PCM or Bitstream. This same noise was a problem in the early days of DTS when a DTS track was played through a processor that did not have a DTS decoder. Fortunately I remembered that before I ran the test and had the volume on my pre-pro turned down to -30dB, where the hiss was still very audible. Caveat emptor. “

This is only one player of course, but it will hurt Blu-Ray’s market share and that’s already damaged by being a month later than the HD-DVD format. More importantly Blu-Ray is another in a long line of Sony media formats (Betamax, Memory Stick, PSP Movie) which seemed doomed by their very existance. I hope Howard Stringer is considering ditching the R and D budget for that department, because they’re killing him.

LOVE can be seen at the Mirage Theatre, the same one which housed Sigfreid and Roy for 13 years until a misguided tiger brought the curtain down on that extravaganza. Apple Corps has a major stake in the show, which is the only possible explanation of why Paul and Ringo and Yoko and Julian and Cynthia and Olivia (Mrs. Harrison) would show up for it. After the show, Yoko said, “All this time when I was working on this show in the rehearsals, I thought ‘oh, John should be here,’ That’s the only thing that I regret, the fact that he’s not here, because he would have enjoyed it so much.” I’m guessing there would have been a few other regrets.

So the Cirque de Soleil acrobats act out little tableaux illustrating the the history of the Beatles, from their childhoods in the 40’s to the height of their fame. In one scene, Klansmen throw knives at a cross, a reference to the death threats received when John suggested the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

Since Yoko participated, it’s a safe bet to assume that her role in the breakup is minimized.

It’s unfair of me to review a show I haven’t seen, or even read a review of, but I don’t get out to Vegas often. And as for reviews, much of Las Vegas is in some weird critical no-fly zone. My cursory Google for opinions about LOVE yielded no fruit, not even strawberries. But come on… isn’t it a no brainer that this will be unwatchable? If the Apple Corps people weren’t so worried about making this show work, they probably would have had the rescources to win that suit against Apple  Computer. Ha! I hope you’re satisfied, Yoko!

1. Ping Pong Table
2. Candied Fruit
3. Mittens
4. Bagel
5. Hocky Puck
6. Lawn Furniture
7. Recipe Book
8. Videophone
9. Aromatherapy Oils
10. Audio Speakers

Marketing strategy or beat poetry? We report, you decide.

Sadly he signed away movie sequel rights so whatever he makes from the new book will only be based book sales among the post-literate. He’s lucky in a way though. Dustin Hoffman is older than Anne Bancroft was is 1967; Bancroft herself is dead. Webb is about Hoffman’s age… maybe in this one a crusty but still attractive Benjamin Braddock will seduce a young college girl.

Ew. But it would certainly define a generation again.

The unique challege facing Webb is writing a story which is of dubious usefulness. If he wants to include Mrs. Robinson, it will have to be set in the early ’70s – what can we learn from that? Does anyone really want to relive that god-forsaken couple of years? If he doesn’t include Mrs. Robinson, well, what will the theme song be about?

I’m among the millions of Americans who missed it, but wasn’t RUMOR HAS IT a sequel to THE GRADUATE?

Best case scenario – the sequel takes place right after the last moments of the movie. Benjamin and (what’s her name, Katherine? Sylvia? There’s an entertainment-blocker here at work) get off the bus, and a book-long foot chase ensues as priests struggle to regain the stolen plaster cross that Benjamin hit them with on the way out of the wedding. It can be a kind of light-hearted TERMINATOR.

Warner Bros is preparing a DIRTY HARRY computer game for release next year. The game will coincide with a five HD-disk set of the Dirty Harry movies. Suddenly instead of a leathery snarling mummy, Eastwood will be young, hydrated and ready for action. And snarling.

The game will use Eastwood’s real voice (which hasn’t aged) along with the voices of Gene Hackman and Larry Fishburne. In terms of story they say the game will take place after DIRTY HARRY but before MAGNUM FORCE, which means the character will have a full pompadour and almost no wrinkles.

It’s no secret that computer games are big business right now, with many of them grossing more than many movies. This means they can attract A-list talent and properties. And Dirty Harry, a rogue cop who enforces the law when our legal system is helpless to do so, is a good icon to bring back now that people have so little faith in the government. From Watergate to WatergateGate.

I can’t help wondering if Eastwood would bother with this game nonsense if computer animation were farther along. A fully animated Harry Callahan, if it didn’t look creepy or artificial, would be a prime candidate for the big screen. But if that were so, imagine the fallout – we’d never be rid of Donald Sutherland, or Jack Nicholson, or Warren Beatty. Given the industry’s penchant for betting on sure things over untested long shots, well, let’s just say that the upcoming Superman movie would probably star Paul Newman, just like they always wanted. Is that the world you want to live in?

(A personal observation about Sudden Impact and my bald friend Bill can be found here.)

Quoted in Associated Press, WB Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara said, “If we can convert 5, 10, 15 percent of the peer-to-peer users that have been obtaining our product from illegitimate sources to becoming legitimate buyers of our product, that has the potential of a huge impact on our industry and our economics.”

Perhaps the industry recognizes the benefit of BitTorrent, which is a distributed data system. Instead of a file coming from a single source, BitTorrent allows downloading from anywhere the file is on the network. Once you’ve downloaded a piece, BitTorrent makes that piece available to someone else. Thus you don’t have to put all the pressure on one server and one pipeline. The best part of it is the system is at its most efficient when there is the most demand. Thus the most expensive parts of online distribution are out of the picture.

What they don’t like about this system is the same thing – it makes pirating easy and efficient, and it’s decentralized (Who’s the source? Everyone!) so you can’t kill it. The best they were able to do was reach an agreement with the BitTorrent site to stop indexing copywrited material. However there are other sites which do, and the BitTorrent has no control over them. Rather than name them, may I recommend Google? That keeps the lawyers off my back.

This is forcing WB to compete with free downloads by offering reliable service, virus-free files, and reasonable prices. They say they will offer the files the same day they are available on DVD, for about the same price, and you will be able to burn them onto a DVD-R though it won’t be playable on a DVD player, just your computer.

Meanwhile Fox has signed a deal with the iTunes Music Store to distribute TV shows from both Fox and FX, the edgy basic cable sister station. Fox joins CBS, NBC and ABC in the quest to squeeze more money out of episodic television.

So why does it cost so much for a DVD, videotape or downloaded file? Because of the pre-startup costs. Every time a new distribution medium appears, the MPAA must first claim it will kill the industry, then attack it in the press, then persue costly but spurious lawsuits. PR and lawyers aren’t cheap.

Due in mid-September, the two disc sets will feature both the revised, digitally cleaned versions and the originals with their clunkier special effects and stage-bound muppets. In case you have forgotten, USA Today reminds us what George Lucas has been hiding from us:

• In Star Wars, Han Solo shoots a bounty hunter named Greedo. Lucas changed the scene later so it seemed that Greedo draws first, and changed it again for the DVD so that they appear to shoot simultaneously.

• In Empire Strikes Back, the ice creature that captures Luke Skywalker gets less screen time.

• In Jedi, Sebastian Shaw returns as Anakin in the movie’s final scene. Lucas substituted Hayden Christiansen, who plays Anakin in the more recent films, for the 2004 DVD.

Plus there’s all the original matte-box marks! More importantly the original versions were made by the George Lucas who WASN’T behind episodes 1-3, which we all agree sucked. Though they did suck lucratively.

If you prefer the originals, you recognize that art draws strength from it’s limitations, and the more resources you have to acheive perfection the bigger the damage will be. I’m for digital effects in story-telling. Often they can erase the detail that distracts you from the main characters. Making an effects movie like Star Wars digitally, though, is like fishing from a barrel. “Yeah yeah, big fish. Good for you.” You take the effects for granted and start looking for the difficult stuff, which is where the most recent Star Wars movies suffered – acting and story.

Meanwhile over at Hasbro, reports the San Jose Mercury, they have produced a George Lucas action figure. He’s in a storm trooper costume. Draw your own conclusions.

The evil marketing empire will take the DVDs off the market December 31st, crushing the rebellious original versions. You have a small window of opportunity to strike a blow for freedom. If these things sell, maybe they can talk Speilberg into releasing the original cut of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

As I advocated in my previous blog, a London court has decided that the breach of copywrite suit against Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE is without merit. “Utterly without merit,” Dan Brown says. Did he steal that phrase? No. It was fair use.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh had asserted that Brown stole “the central theme” of their nonfiction book HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL. Since it was non-fiction, Brown could take any of the research and use it in his novel, so that “central theme” argument is what the case hinged on. However, Judge Peter Smith ultimately decided that their book had no central theme, not in the way they were asserting. In his ruling he said, ”It was an artificial creation for the purposes of the litigation working back from the Da Vinci Code.”

I have believed from the start that this is a simple extortion racket – settle out of court now or pay the consequences later. In this case 85% of Random House’s court consequences must be paid by the plaintiffs. In American money it will be almost 2 million dollars.

The suit has also generated some free publicity, which means less money spent on real ads.

You may get blood from a grail, but don’t try to tap into Random House.

Intellectual property law in this country says that you can’t copywrite an idea that you call a fact. If you publish a story that says Ronald Regan was bionic, then back it up with interviews from people who claim they saw him oiling his joints before stepping off Air Force One, that’s considered non-fiction. If you leave out the interviews, it’s fiction.

As a reader, you’re more likely to read the non-fiction version because you’re dying to see how they made a case for the six-million-dollar president. But once it’s out there as non-fiction, it becomes a source of research. You claim it’s the truth, and you can’t copywrite truth. You can only copywrite the way that you told it.

Random House’s defense is that Dan Brown read HBHG and plenty of other literature on the subject, so of course he used some of the same ideas. The case will come down to similarity in wording between the two works.

Personally, I thought Da Vinci Code was a lousy novel (it reads like a hack screenplay and that should be the job of the actual hack screenwriter, not the novelist) but a fascinating vehicle for research. When the movie comes out this summer, I may even buy a copy of HBHG myself. If Random House is smart they’ll cross-plug it; after all, they published both books.

Blockbuster, still smarting from the roundhouse kick that Netflix dealt to its bottom line, went into the DVD-mailing business last year, and in response Netflix dropped their prices. However, it cost them, and they appear to have also dropped their service standards. 

Now word comes that Amazon is talking to GE, Universal and Time-Warner about the rights to sell downloads of their properties, for home DVD burning. This business model threatens to kick Netflix in the face AND tear the still-beating heart out of Blockbuster.

Blockbuster is a comparatively inefficient way of getting the product to you – thousands of individual locations. Each one stocks superflous product and pays for the real estate in highly populated areas. Netflix has the advantage of only needing a few warehouses nationwide and being able to fine-tune its inventory – if the demand for BATTLEFIELD EARTH turns out to be sparse, you don’t have to buy 1 copy for each store. Blockbuster can get you your video in half an hour and Netflix takes several days – those are the factors that consumers see.

Downloading means your phyiscal inventory is a hard-drive array which you can loacate in Afghanistan if you want. And Blockbuster still beats it for speed but not by much. So the price-point for downloads is low as hell, meaning they can pretty much charge whatever everybody decides they can get away with. It’s true that download speeds, bandwidth and availability of consumers with DVD burners all limit this distribution model today, but it’s also true that an army of geeks is working to ensure that it won’t be a problem tomorrow.

So what’s Blockbuster to do? Digital sage Robert X. Cringely suggests it will turn into a video iPod filling station. This leaves plucky Netflix without even a set of nunchucks – long delivery times, old-fashioned physical inventory, enormous bloated warehouses AND a reliance on the US Postal Service. However, don’t write it off yet. Like Bruce Lee, it could keep on making appearances long after it is dead. The thing that Netflix has is the weirdo rental structure – as many as you like, but only X amount out at a time. This leads people to rent movies they wouldn’t even consider normally – it doesn’t feel like you wasted money if it’s already included in the plan. And this makes Netflix more fun.

Hiiiiiiiii-yah!

The Times focusses on international downloading – they talk to a housewife in England who watches LOST 12 hours after it airs instead of nine months later when it will officially hit the briny shores of her green and verdant land. I myself have done this in reverse – I downloaded all 13 episodes of DR. WHO 2005 because to date they STILL haven’t aired in America. I understand that a DVD will be coming out soon. Soon.

The networks say their biggest fear is that the shows turn up on the net without the commercials, thus eating into their advertising revenue. I hate to say it, but that Tardis left the planet a long time ago, when videotape allowed people to fast-forward.

Boiling down the arguments of all content providers, the question is does file sharing eat into sales of the product? Probably yes for the top sellers, and probably no for the more unknown items. So Brittany Spears is getting a bite taken out of her; but LOST is thriving in England. In fact, file sharing is a kind of viral sales tool for the under-performing. The pilot of Dr. Who is said to have been leaked to the net by none other than Auntie Beeb herself, after consultation with viral marketing firm.

The record business was enjoying its last period of record sales just before they managed to shut down Napster. And networks are enjoying greater than anticipated revenues from iTunes program sales, even though you can get those same episodes for free many hours earlier on bittorrent.

The entertainment companies aren’t losing nearly as much money to piracy as they are to prevention efforts. Lawyers – there’s pirates for ya.

You can compare this figure to last year’s 4th quarter when the company lost 7.33 million. Of course, Martha was serving a 5-month prison sentence for stock fraud, and that kind of thing can hit the bottom line. Now that’s a thing of the past. Price of shares is up.

Give that woman some powdered sugar, a trowel, and a basket of verbena and she can fix anything.

“Starbucks president Ken Lombard said the company’s content division will be relocating from its Seattle headquarters and closer to the hub of Hollywood. Last week’s disclosure came during a gathering of the nonprofit Digital Coast Roundtable held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, where Lombard said its Starbucks Entertainment content unit will be relocating to Los Angeles. The move demonstrates its commitment to its entertainment strategy, Lombard said.”

Mike Meyers was right – Dr. Evil DOES run Starbucks. They’re not content to put a cafe on every street corner, even if there is another one on the opposite corner. Starbucks is already the leading distributor of B-list recording artists, yanking the rug out from Rhino Records. Now they’re going to cozy up with music and movie people – presumably with an eye toward having Starbucks in every damn thing you see and hear. Brace yourselves.

Incidentally, for kicks walk into the nearest Starbucks and order a short drink. I recommend the cappucino. It’s true – Starbucks offers an unadvertised size. Drink up!

Exhibitors and distributors don’t trust each other, for a lot of reasons. And it all boils down to this – the exhibitors get the money first. Massive amounts of cash come from ticket buyers, and the movie theatres collect it. The first opportunity for cheating is here, because employees can take the money and not issue tickets. If tickets aren’t issued, there’s no record of the sale.

Then the figures are called in to a service called EDI, which takes the data from several sources and crunches it. But it’s a kid reporting figures over the phone, or faxing handwritten sheets. There’s room for error.

Meanwhile, the theatre deposits the cash into an account. They hold onto it, let it accrue interest. Eventually when the run of the picture is over, all the spreadsheets are compiled so an accurate (minus theft) picture of the total gross of the movie is available. This is where the real fun begins.

Exhibitors make most of their money from sales of food, or rather of “food”. So usually when they are booking a movie, an agreement is made that they’ll turn over 90% of the ticket sales for the film’s first week, then 85% the second, then 80% for the next two, 75% for the next three, and so on. This gives the theatres an incentive to keep the movie on the screens earning money for as long as possible. So you’d think most movies would net about 80% of their sales for the studios. However, the exhibitors have all the money, and usually renegotiate before they turn it over. “If you’ll take 60% of the whole lump sum we’ll promise to book your Travolta movie next month for a guarenteed four week run.” The studio, which has been waiting 6 months for its money, will usually cave because they want the cash back. It’s not grosses, it’s ransom money.

So the theatres keep almost half of the gross, plus the interest they earned while stalling. And they’re staffed by mostly minimum-wage employees. And they have a captive audience for their fifteen minutes of advertising before the show.

Ever get the feeling you should have gone into another business?

The other format, HD-DVD, is backward-compatible, meaning it will also play DVD and CD and therefore not require more shelf space. Blu-Ray boasts higher capacity disks and presumably a less-compressed signal, therefore a cleaner picture. Sony, Dell, Matsushita and Mitsubishi are among those behind Blu-Ray; NEC and Toshiba are the main backers of HD-DVD.

The studios are mostly waiting to see which format wins the scuffle; Sony and MGM (both owned by Sony) obviously are releasing only on Blu-Ray… at first.

This must seem familiar to you – Sony backing a superior but exclusive media format. What could be Beta? (See what I did there? Ha ha!) So if we can learn the lessons of the past, Sony would be wise to round up as much support from the porno industry as it can. It is said that Sony refusing to allow the skin flicks on Betamax resulted in VHS taking the early and decisive lead. If Blu-Ray wants to survive, they better get the BEST PORN EVER on those disks and fast, because otherwise every market force looks likes it’s against them.