Freyburg

According to a recent article in Slate, movies appearing at the Sundance film festival by and large don’t get pirated, and instead wallow in obscurity. The author’s contention is that pirates only pay attention to big releases, but I think it may have more to do with the fact that the average Sundance filmmaker probably isn’t tech-savvy enough to get their film onto torrent sites in the first place. After all, 90 percent of the films at Sundance and other film festivals go on to virtually no distribution, so why not at least try to get some eyeballs on all that hard work?

Prolost, the blog of author and special effects whiz Stu Maschwitz, has an excellent feature on how a BBC program used four graphic designers, greenscreens, color correction, and some clever thinking to more or less reproduce the opening of Saving Private Ryan. The video is below, but go to Stu’s blog post, as he has plenty of things to say about the process.

The Justice League catapults back to the Victorian Age, in action figure form. What’s not to like? It’s pretty much nerdvana. (courtesy of this post at Boing Boing)

Francis Ford Coppola recently emerged from a long sabbatical from the director’s chair to create “Youth Without Youth“, a film he made entirely with his own money and which, incidentally, is pretty terrible. Much better than the film itself is this article in Vanity Fair, which details how Coppola is pursuing his artistic vision with a $500 million cushion created by his vineyard, cigar business and other savvy financial moves.

Radiohead recently gave away their latest album, “In Rainbows,” online with the caveat that listeners could donate whatever they found appropriate. The NY Times examines both the band’s decision and the larger trend of musicians splitting off from their labels and going out on their own.

My non-Canadian readers may not be aware of it, but Canada’s media industries have long worked under the yoke of CanCon, a government policy that states TV and radio stations must play “X” amount of Canadian content if they want to play other, predominantly American, shows and music that people actually want to watch and listen to. There are several flaws in the system, not the least of which is that is if a Canadian artist becomes a huge success, like Celine Dion or Bryan Adams, their work is no longer considered “Canadian.” Actually, given the suckitude of both those artists, maybe that isn’t such a bad policy.

At any rate, Cancon regulations created a myriad number of terrible bands who would have otherwise never been heard of, and recent successes like the Montreal indie music scene have more to do with file sharing and Myspace than they do with cultural policy.

So it’s amusing to me that a bunch of Canadian artists want to regulate the internet in order to make sure online content created by Canadians doesn’t get buried under a deluge of American content. It seems like they’re fighting the last war, when scarce space on the airwaves meant there was only so much room for content to be seen. With the internet, those conditions no longer apply. Speaking as a content creator myself, I know most of my (small) fan base isn’t even in Canada, but rather in the US, England, and Australia.

Amusing, but shocking. Try to keep up, whiny Canadian artists. While you were begging for grants and throwing derisive glares at those of us who don’t make experimental tone poems on Super8 film, the world passed you by.

If you’ve ever said “but what the Internet REALLY needs is a site dedicated to the greatest nut-punchings in comic book history,” well, enjoy.

Hollywood’s writers are again threatening to strike, this time because they feel they aren’t getting enough of a piece of the new media pie. They’re proposing to get residuals whenever something “airs” on the internet. How they propose to actually do such a thing remains to be seen.

Well, I’ve got news for them…get your own damn pie. Hollywood was clearly running out of ideas long before the writers decided to up their demands, and it’s high time for independent producers to step up and circumvent the entire Hollywood system. With internet distribution clearly up tot the task, and with tastes radically changing from Hollywood pap to more lo-fi offerings, this is the chance video podcasters and indy moviemakers have been waiting for. The movie industry is once again cutting off its nose to spite its face Let’s help it out.

Vancouver (and Malta) technologist Darren Barefoot noted a recent interview on the Q podcast (a show on CBC hosted by Jian Gomeshi) which featured an interview with filmmaker and big thinker Peter Greenaway, the creator of films like “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” and his most recent “Nightwatching.”

Greenaway makes the very good point that cinema, in terms of something where people put aside two hours of unmitigated attention for a bunch of pictures on screen, is a dying medium. He contends that kids today are knee deep in interactivity and laptops, and that as such, new art that takes advantage of these forms needs to be created. In that kind of world, a straight-ahead “film” doesn’t stand much of a chance. I’d like to think otherwise as I love everything about movies, but it’s hard to argue with a guy who once guest-curated the Louvre.