Speaking of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and late night talk shows, Jimmy Kimmel's show tapes directly across the street from the Chinese. They have *got* to look across the street and see the comedy gold mine that's basically fallen into their laps.
The funniest part about this is that the line-goers *refuse* to move to the Arclight, even though the Mann theatre chain has confirmed thus far that they're not playing the movie either. They're still holding out hope that the Chinese will be playing it, like it apparently has for the line-goers for Episodes I and II.
On that note, here's a Top 10 Reasons [the line] should move to the Arclight. 10. The Episode 3 is playing at the Arclight, not Grauman's Chinese. 9. Hot chicks go to the Arclight 8. Caramel Corn! 7. You won't trip over the stupid holes in sidewalk like around here. 6. People will stop telling you to 'Get a life.' 5. Natalie Portman goes to the movies at the Arclight. 4. You're that much closer to Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. 3. You can play the 'Count the Hipster' game. 2. The Episode 3 is playing at the Arclight, not Grauman's Chinese. 1. The Trekkies are laughing at you.
Hell, Wil Wheaton (yes, it's actually him and not a comment troll) even told the line to get a life here.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, hundreds of fans gathered at the gates of Paramount studios for the main rally of the day, led by Tim Brazeal, founder of the SaveEnterprise and TrekUnited campaigns.
It's funny/sad just how inflated that number is.
I was there on Friday morning for about ten minutes as a photographer, and there were only about a hundred fans. Hell, StarTrek.com puts the number at about 120-150 fans.
A friend of mine stayed and documented the Enterprise rally with his videocamera, taping several hours worth of footage. He says that it picked up a little more after I left, but there were about 150 protesters at best, and that the stuff he captured rivals Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's roasting of Star Wars fans waiting in line for Episode I (speaking of which, some Star Wars fans crashed the rally by showing up in costume dressed as Stormtroopers and Darth Vader).
Still, I suppose the number of fans at Friday's rally easily beat the Captain Sulu rally five years ago that drew maybe 15 fans, many of whom showed up in costume(!).
The game was originally pretty easy to beat in the "A" setting.
I also remember this game being more difficult with the "B" setting (one or two more dragons, and the dragons moved much faster, plus you had the annoying bat to deal with, and the gameverse you travelled in seemed to be a little larger (or you had to go back and retrace your steps a few times to retrieve different objects to attain your goal), but the Flash version doesn't seem to mirror that. Either that or my memory's failing me.:(
Last weekend I was at the Gameworks in Las Vegas, and was playing a Ms. Pac-Man machine that was next to a few other vintage arcade machines (Robotron, Centipede, Xevious, Missile Command) that were standing alongside a wall in an alcove.
Enter a group of kids.
One of them says, "Hey, look! Old-fashioned games!"
I couldn't help but utter a Homer Simpson-esque, "D'oh!" in response.:(
The upcoming Sin City (based on Frank Miller's graphic novel series, and it's directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller) uses a similar filmmaking technique as "Sky Captain," although not to the same degree. An FAQ is here.
Last modified: February 18, 2004, 1:39 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
It's probably not the first time that record company executives have been likened to Al Capone, but this time a judge might have to agree or disagree.
A New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act.
Through her attorneys, Michele Scimeca contends that by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime.
"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting," Scimeca's attorney, Bart Lombardo, wrote in documents filed with a New Jersey federal court. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."
Scimeca is one of a growing number of people fighting the record industry's copyright infringement campaign against file-swappers, although few have used such creative legal strategies.
According to the RIAA, which filed its latest round of lawsuits against 531 as-yet-anonymous individuals on Tuesday, it has settled with 381 people, including some who had not yet actually had suits filed against them yet. A total of nearly 1,500 people have been sued so far.
The industry group says that "a handful" of people have countersued, using a variety of claims.
"If someone prefers not to settle, they of course have the opportunity to raise their objections in court," an RIAA representative said. "We stand by our claims."
Few if any of the cases appear to have progressed far, however. The first RIAA lawsuits against individuals were filed more than five months ago, although the majority of people targeted have been part of the "John Doe" campaigns against anonymous individuals this year.
Several individuals and companies have started by fighting the RIAA attempts to identify music swappers though their Internet service providers (ISPs).
The most prominent, known by the alleged file-swapper's screen name "Nycfashiongirl," resulted in at least a temporary victory for the computer user. A Washington, D.C., court ruled in December that the RIAA's initial legal process for subpoenaing ISP subscriber identities before filing lawsuits was illegal. Because "Nycfashiongirl" had been targeted under this process, the RIAA dropped its request for her identity.
However, that may have provided only a temporary reprieve. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that is closely following the RIAA's campaign, the Internet address used by "Nycfashiongirl" was included in the batch of lawsuits filed on Tuesday against anonymous individuals, raising the likelihood that she will be drawn back into the courts.
Separate attempts to fight subpoenas are ongoing in North Carolina and St. Louis, where the American Civil Liberties Union and ISP Charter Communications are respectively challenging the RIAA's information requests.
In San Francisco, computer user Raymond Maalouf has taken the first steps toward fighting the RIAA's suits. His daughters were the ones that used Kazaa to download music, and one of them even wound up in last month's Super Bowl advertisement for Pepsi's iTunes promotion, which featured a handful of teens caught in the RIAA dragnet.
In documents filed with San Francisco courts, Maalouf's attorneys noted tha
Of course, right after I submit the last comment, I get through.
FWIW, the free song for today is Foo Fighters' "My Hero" (Track 7), off their album titled "The Colour and the Shape" (1997).
It's not working here in California either. The text says "Accessing Music Store..." and the progress bar is moving, but I haven't been able to get anywhere thus far, and I'm on a broadband connection too.
Goes to show you if a free track is available off the front page of the iTMS, people will want it?
I picked up a blue iPod Mini from one of the Apple Stores in the Los Angeles area about a week or two after it was released. I'm really glad I picked one up so early since they're so hard to come by nowadays.
And I find that 1,000 songs on the iPod Mini is more than adequate. I have more than that stored on my computer, but am content to rotate content when necessary.
I broke my iPod Mini about a month ago and the turnaround to get it replaced was really quick. I shipped it out on a Tuesday and received a replacement on a Friday.
Judging by what I've read thus far, the rarest iPod Mini color has been pink, followed by gold and green, blue, and then silver.
Checking eBay, it's also interesting to note that pink iPod Minis are also the ones selling for the highest amount, selling for hundredsofdollars the retail price.
I thought about reselling brand-new iPod Minis on eBay, but when I contacted a local Apple Store, they told me that after Apple announced that they were delaying worldwide shipments by three months to accomodate the domestic demand, that they hadn't received any new iPod Minis and to put my name on a waiting list or order it online. So much for that idea.
I find it rather amusing that according to this website, Wal-Mart's 88 cents per track price point "...will be minimized by sales taxes that apply to customers that have a Wal-Mart in their state."
Another reason, among many, to keep using the iTunes Music Store. 50 million downloads and counting.:)
Back in November, I went to a screening of The Matrix Revolutions (yeah, don't get me started) at Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and this commercial came onscreen.
At first, no one in the audience seemed to know what it was about, but as soon as the guy started talking about how terrible file-sharing was, the amount of booing that subsequently ensued as the rest of the ad played *really* overwhelmed the few hisses I heard in response. And we're talking about this happening in the moviemaking capital of the world (discounting the San Fernando Valley, which is of course the adult moviemaking capital of the world)!
After that commercial played, we were subject to a rather large number of trailers, including one for The Missing. And judging by the rather tepid reaction to it, I joked to my friends sitting next to me, "Eh, I'll be watching that online," which generated a good amount of laughter.
Joss Whedon and several members of the cast and crew are scheduled to appear at the LA Comic Book and Sci-Fi Convention (yeah, the convention will be full of geeky fans, but check the list of past convention guests and you have to admit that it's pretty damn impressive, and the admission price of $7.50 can't be beat either) this coming Sunday to promote the DVD, and Fox will have them there for sale for $25.00:
Joining JOSS on stage at 1:00 P.M. will be TIM MINEAR (Writer), BEN EDLUND (Writer-also creator of THE TICK Comic Book), Stars NATHON FILLION (CAPTAIN MALCOLM "MAL" REYNOLDS), GINA TORRES (ZOE), ADAM BALDWIN (JAYNE), RON GLASS (BOOK "THE SHEPHERD"), and MORENA BACCARIN (INARA).
Fox Home Entertainment will have GREAT PRICES on DVD's at their table at the Convention! Fox will have the FIREFLY COMPLETE SERIES DVD COLLECTION on sale for just $24.99. They will also have BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Season One-Five for $34.99. ANGEL Volume One and Two will be on sale for $34.99. X-2: X-MEN UNITED will be on sale for $14.99, and X-FILES DVD's will also be on sale.
It'll be interesting to hear his thoughts on the TV series, on FOX network execs, the DVDs, and the upcoming movie project (which contrary to recent reports, has a very long way to go).
Plus if you go, you'll have a chance to rib Joss on singing the theme song.:)
There's some crazy person singing the theme song, which, I can't stress enough, people should just avoid that particular extra. It was never meant to be heard by anybody....
Yeah, that'd be me. I threw it down. I was like, OK, I'll just throw it down so they know the chords and then we'll get some great old blues singer to sing it and it will be cool. And they were like, "Let's put it on the DVD." And I was like, "OK." And then I listened to it. I was like, "I must die now [laughs]." I can't stress this enough--not a singer....
But the embarrassment is outweighed by the fact that I love this show as hard as anything I've loved, and to have it exist on the DVD shelf and in perpetuity is such a great thing for me.
Even Tim Minear, who worked on Firefly, couldn't find the DVDs:
"Okay, so I just got back from the virgin megastore here in Hollywood. I was pissed because I felt that the Firefly DVDs should have been proudly and obviously displayed in the new releases. As I was I checking out I mentioned this -- and the guys there told me that the reason I couldn't find them was because they'd sold out almost right away. Saweeet-ah."
Slashdot Mirror
You have to wonder what the guy up in Seattle who's been waiting up in line for *five months* for Episode III feels about this.
Speaking of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and late night talk shows, Jimmy Kimmel's show tapes directly across the street from the Chinese. They have *got* to look across the street and see the comedy gold mine that's basically fallen into their laps.
The funniest part about this is that the line-goers *refuse* to move to the Arclight, even though the Mann theatre chain has confirmed thus far that they're not playing the movie either. They're still holding out hope that the Chinese will be playing it, like it apparently has for the line-goers for Episodes I and II.
More about the line here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On that note, here's a Top 10 Reasons [the line] should move to the Arclight.
10. The Episode 3 is playing at the Arclight, not Grauman's Chinese.
9. Hot chicks go to the Arclight
8. Caramel Corn!
7. You won't trip over the stupid holes in sidewalk like around here.
6. People will stop telling you to 'Get a life.'
5. Natalie Portman goes to the movies at the Arclight.
4. You're that much closer to Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles.
3. You can play the 'Count the Hipster' game.
2. The Episode 3 is playing at the Arclight, not Grauman's Chinese.
1. The Trekkies are laughing at you.
Hell, Wil Wheaton (yes, it's actually him and not a comment troll) even told the line to get a life here.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, hundreds of fans gathered at the gates of Paramount studios for the main rally of the day, led by Tim Brazeal, founder of the SaveEnterprise and TrekUnited campaigns.
It's funny/sad just how inflated that number is.
I was there on Friday morning for about ten minutes as a photographer, and there were only about a hundred fans. Hell, StarTrek.com puts the number at about 120-150 fans.
A friend of mine stayed and documented the Enterprise rally with his videocamera, taping several hours worth of footage. He says that it picked up a little more after I left, but there were about 150 protesters at best, and that the stuff he captured rivals Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's roasting of Star Wars fans waiting in line for Episode I (speaking of which, some Star Wars fans crashed the rally by showing up in costume dressed as Stormtroopers and Darth Vader).
Still, I suppose the number of fans at Friday's rally easily beat the Captain Sulu rally five years ago that drew maybe 15 fans, many of whom showed up in costume(!).
The game was originally pretty easy to beat in the "A" setting. I also remember this game being more difficult with the "B" setting (one or two more dragons, and the dragons moved much faster, plus you had the annoying bat to deal with, and the gameverse you travelled in seemed to be a little larger (or you had to go back and retrace your steps a few times to retrieve different objects to attain your goal), but the Flash version doesn't seem to mirror that. Either that or my memory's failing me. :(
FWIW, there's a "Sin City" FAQ, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the film, and a trailer that was first shown at the San Diego Comic-Con this past summer.
If hearing those kids talk about Adventure makes you want to check out the game (again), you can play a Flash version of it right here.
Funny timing.
:(
Last weekend I was at the Gameworks in Las Vegas, and was playing a Ms. Pac-Man machine that was next to a few other vintage arcade machines (Robotron, Centipede, Xevious, Missile Command) that were standing alongside a wall in an alcove.
Enter a group of kids.
One of them says, "Hey, look! Old-fashioned games!"
I couldn't help but utter a Homer Simpson-esque, "D'oh!" in response.
I suppose it's fitting that there's at least one blogging who's blogging the event here.
eDonkey... eMule... I'm waiting for eAss. Sorry, someone had to say it. :)
The upcoming Sin City (based on Frank Miller's graphic novel series, and it's directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller) uses a similar filmmaking technique as "Sky Captain," although not to the same degree. An FAQ is here.
:)
Compare the behind-the-scenes footage to the trailer that was shown at this summer's San Diego Comic-Con (they had originally posted a 640x480 version but it's been replaced by a 480x272 version).
Check it out (there's a brief topless scene, so it's not SFW), if only for the shots of Jessica Alba dancing around seductively in leather chaps.
Are here. Noticeably absent are William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
Anyways, there are write-ups about this past weekend's farewell convention here and the ceremony here.
It'll be interesting to see how long it'll take before the operator of that weblog is arrested, even though he's trying to prove a point.
Of course, right after I submit the last comment, I get through. FWIW, the free song for today is Foo Fighters' "My Hero" (Track 7), off their album titled "The Colour and the Shape" (1997).
It's not working here in California either. The text says "Accessing Music Store..." and the progress bar is moving, but I haven't been able to get anywhere thus far, and I'm on a broadband connection too.
Goes to show you if a free track is available off the front page of the iTMS, people will want it?
I picked up a blue iPod Mini from one of the Apple Stores in the Los Angeles area about a week or two after it was released. I'm really glad I picked one up so early since they're so hard to come by nowadays.
And I find that 1,000 songs on the iPod Mini is more than adequate. I have more than that stored on my computer, but am content to rotate content when necessary.
I broke my iPod Mini about a month ago and the turnaround to get it replaced was really quick. I shipped it out on a Tuesday and received a replacement on a Friday.
Judging by what I've read thus far, the rarest iPod Mini color has been pink, followed by gold and green, blue, and then silver.
Checking eBay, it's also interesting to note that pink iPod Minis are also the ones selling for the highest amount, selling for hundreds of dollars the retail price.
I thought about reselling brand-new iPod Minis on eBay, but when I contacted a local Apple Store, they told me that after Apple announced that they were delaying worldwide shipments by three months to accomodate the domestic demand, that they hadn't received any new iPod Minis and to put my name on a waiting list or order it online. So much for that idea.
A bit off-topic, but Amoeba Music (Bay Area, Hollywood) has similar kiosks.
I find it rather amusing that according to this website, Wal-Mart's 88 cents per track price point "...will be minimized by sales taxes that apply to customers that have a Wal-Mart in their state."
:)
Another reason, among many, to keep using the iTunes Music Store. 50 million downloads and counting.
Back in November, I went to a screening of The Matrix Revolutions (yeah, don't get me started) at Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and this commercial came onscreen.
At first, no one in the audience seemed to know what it was about, but as soon as the guy started talking about how terrible file-sharing was, the amount of booing that subsequently ensued as the rest of the ad played *really* overwhelmed the few hisses I heard in response. And we're talking about this happening in the moviemaking capital of the world (discounting the San Fernando Valley, which is of course the adult moviemaking capital of the world)!
After that commercial played, we were subject to a rather large number of trailers, including one for The Missing. And judging by the rather tepid reaction to it, I joked to my friends sitting next to me, "Eh, I'll be watching that online," which generated a good amount of laughter.
Even Tim Minear, who worked on Firefly, couldn't find the DVDs: "Okay, so I just got back from the virgin megastore here in Hollywood. I was pissed because I felt that the Firefly DVDs should have been proudly and obviously displayed in the new releases. As I was I checking out I mentioned this -- and the guys there told me that the reason I couldn't find them was because they'd sold out almost right away. Saweeet-ah."
Oops. :)
I remember the first one listed on eBay sold for $455.00. Unbelievable. Show you how dedicated/hardcore those Buffy fans are. :)
Already got one. Fuck off. :)