Tobi Elkin
Chomping away at the jerky shenanigans of reality TV show productions never tasted so good.
A little less than a year after their film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, the directors of the indie documentary "American Cannibal: The Road to Reality" pull the trigger today on a national release via Lifesize Entertainment. The film, whose auspicious TFF debut was chronicled here, finally premieres in New York at Cinema Village. The directors...
From FNC
from drudgereport.com
Wow, this may be unprecedented on Drudge: Three photos, of one person, at one event — he must really, really want justice for Valerie Plame! It can't just be the crazy cross-dresser in hot-pink with "Impeach Bush" emblazoned across his broad, manly chest. Actually, maybe it can. I suppose it doesn't hurt, either, that Plame is a beautiful blonde, but one wonders if Drudge would have put a caption like "Ready For Her Closeup" under a pic of, say, Alberto Gonzales testifying at what are sure-to-be-fun hearings that are sure-to-be coming up! (He may not be ready, but that close-up sure looks like it's a-gonna come.) Plame's testimony is big news today — another chance for C-SPAN to shine! — particularly her assertion that she was, in fact, covert, despite the pooh-poohing of detractors who wouldn't have had the security clearance to actually know. ETP doesn't have security clearance, either — not that we'd tell YOU — but we think that Plame's dazzling looks definitely militate in favor of her having been a super-secret agent — we can picture her decked out in some a
wesome slinky gown with a knife strapped to her thigh and an eensy-weensy camera built into her lipstick. And a radio transmitter built into her diamond earrings! And seconds to defuse the bomb before the entire Austrian embassy blows sky-high! We, er, used to watch a lot of Alias. Anyhow, here are more pics of Plame. Who do you think takes her more seriously, CNN or the NYT? Just wondering.
yowbooks.com
Wired News has a jarring story this week about the perils facing Yahoo users in China. Anonymous bloggers who criticize the government and express pro-democracy views are being arrested, charged with "inciting subversion," convicted (sometimes based on evidence provided by Yahoo), and handed prison sentences of up to ten years. The bloggers who fall victim are viewed by the American-based company as unfortunate casualties of a sticky situation, in which Western Internet providers must abide by Chinese laws in order to do business in the country. Yahoo isn't alone - as Wired notes, Google's China search engine blocks access to sites the government deems objectionable, Microsoft's Chinese blogging service contains filters that prohibit words like "freedom" and "democracy" from blog titles, and Cisco supplies the internet equipment needed to create the country's so-called "Great Firewall" that blocks Chinese citizens from viewing websites about Tibet and Tiananmen Square. Still, Yahoo has long been fingered as the worst offender, facing continued charges of collaborating willingly with the Chinese government's Internet censorship and policing regulations after investing heavily in the country's e-commerce and web markets. In response, a Yahoo spokesman told Wired that the company is "strongly opposed to repression of free speech and is working to develop a set of operating principles to guide its engagement in countries with repressive governments" - but at the end of the day, Yahoo users are being arrested for using its product, and the Internet giant is responding by handing over evidence to convict them.
As always (particularly once the lawyers are called in), the issue isn't black and white - as Stanford Law Prof. Allen Weiner tells Wired, "when you're doing business in a foreign country, you're obligated to comply with the [country's] law," adding, "We may not like the law. But Yahoo is in a difficult position." Fair point, but come on now - is it too much to assume that a company whose product relies on supplying forums for the free dissemination of ideas and information should foresee issues like this in providing Internet services to non-democratic nations? And when situations like, say, the imprisonment of your customers and alleged violations of their human rights arise, is it unreasonable to expect that you'll turn all possible resources and energies towards coming up with a solution? Perhaps the most frightening part of Wired's report is the Yahoo spokesman's admission that he had never heard of the case of Wang Xiaoning (who was imprisoned in 2002 for distributing "prohibited" writings through his Yahoo e-mail account) until now, despite continued media coverage of the story over a span of several years. At some point, the line between legally-tied hands and indifference starts to look dangerously thin.
From Amazon.com; reimagined by Martin Higgins for ETP
Christopher Hitchens has had a good week: It was announced that he would receive a National Magazine Award for his "prolific columns in Vanity Fair and as the subject of a masterful profile by Ian Parker in The New Yorker," which sort of sounds like a bit of a shaft to Parker, and, come to think of it, to Slate and the Weekly Standard and the WSJ where Hitchens really is prolific. Dude writes a lot.
But anyway, we think that he should be bringing that prolificity (fun new word!) to the masses, never mind his fabled and self-celebrated wit — so why won't he? ETP has learned that Hitchens has ignored repeated invitations by comedienne Catie Lazarus, hostess of the oft-touted "Fresh Meat," to perform with her Tuesday-night showcase. Lazarus confirmed that she had invited Hitchens to join in the fun at this week's event, which featured the comedic stylings of Page Six's Paula Froelich; past performers have included funny people like Unstoppable Fighting cartoonist David Rees, ex-Daily Show/Colbert Report EP Ben Karlin, lit-funny authors Jonathan Ames and David Rakoff , plus Air America's Marc Maron, firmly on Hitch's side of the political spectrum. Plus, all of them are boys so we know they're funny. Yet sadly, Hitch has not yet replied so hence not yet appeared.
Which is a shame, because his upcoming book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (May 1, 2007), sounds like a laugh riot. Check out this sample line: "Monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Try the veal! Remember to tip your waitress! (We got this from the Publisher's Weekly review, which seemed impressed here.) Which brings us to our re-imaging of the cover: We ran into someone carrying it at last week's Radar party, and in the dim light of the Beatrice Inn, we mistook the angry-looking mustard-yellow cover for a lovely, pearly pink. Well, there's enough anger in the world, so we thought we'd pretty up the cover just a smidge so that it might bring a little more sweetness and light into this crazy, God-addled world. Plus every "i" looks happier when dotted with a heart! We would so totally buy this book, we're just saying. Yay!
Okay, perhaps that "Yay!" was gratuitous, not unlike this post. But still. Perhaps if Hitch had more "Yay!" in his life then he could have a little less "barely disguised misanthropy" and a little more "out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe -of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth." We shall not elaborate further.
Image spiffery courtesy of Martin Higgins. Thanks, Martin!
bud.tv
Bud.tv, Budweiser's branded online video entertainment site, launched last month with a lot of fanfare and a big Super Bowl promotional push. And given the plethora of video entertainment sites starting up to try to take a bite out of YouTube, Bud.tv was thought of as wave of the future. But what if the future waves and nobody notices? Bud.tv averaged just over 253,000 visitors last month–pretty disconcerting for a site which has about $30 million invested in it and which expected two to three million monthly visitors by the end of the year.
Isolated incident? Or a sign that the massive success of user-generated online content can't be replicated by more conventionally-developed video entertainment? Hard to say, because there are a lot of specific factors in play. Anheuser-Busch blames a cumbersome user registration process. The promotional effort may have been botched. And then there was this.
We don't know if Bud.tv will find an audience, but we don't think its initial failure means much in the larger online entertainment picture.
YouTube nets another network deal: Sumner Redstone - controlled CBS has announced a deal to launch a NCAA tournament channel on YouTube, to be sponsored by Pontiac, that will include game clips and highlights, uploaded in near real time.[MediaWeek]
Here is an issue of the utmost importance to puzzle over: What's the deal with the colons that follow the headlines of Slate pieces on their front page? This has annoyed us for a while, and today we take this annoyance public.
Here's a screenshot of some items as they actually appear on the front page:
Here's what it looks like after an exceptionally skilled and handsome Microsoft Paint user takes an eraser to those colons:
So much better! Because we're not idiots, we can still tell what the headline is, and it looks a lot cleaner.
Shafer, stop trying to get people to drink more and get on this.
