Screener Screamer

Most of the Academy Awards® are decided based on votes made after watching movies on video. They used to be distributed on VHS, and now it’s DVD, of course. These DVD’s are called screeners.

Because movies released at the end of the year, like last year’s Brokeback Mountain, aren’t yet out on DVD, the screeners are candidates for not only Oscar™ consideration, but for video piracy. To prevent piracy of Academy screeners, a company called Cinea marketed a secure DVD system that required a special player with a dialup connection. The technology was a reworking of the Divx (not to be confused with DivX) system sold by Circuit City for a couple of years.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bought into Cinea’s program, but only a couple of the movie studios went along with it. I know somebody who was involved with the screener project. Cinea isn’t officially calling it quits, but the project has pretty much been shut down, and my friend no longer works there.

Jump Rope

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Anime/Jumprope.flv 400 300]

Here’s a nice 3-minute vignette from Azumanga Daioh. The show has such a wide variety of original music, and much of it can stand on its own, like the track I put on the audio player.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/Japan/AzumangaDaioh.mp3]

Holiday

I’m taking a break from my bloggin’ holiday to play DJ again — hey, it’s how I used to make my living, such as it was. Here’s Green Day’s “Holiday” (not to be confused with the Kinks’ song) from their superb “American Idiot.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/Holiday.mp3]

That CD should have been enough to defeat George Bush in the ’04 election. I give Stephen Colbert credit for finishing what Green Day started, winning back Congress from the GOP, and setting this ship we call the USA on a different course. The old one-two punch of anger and humor!

Talk to the Hand

One of my bosses holds out his arm and says “Talk to the hand!” when he’s concentrating on a technical problem and can’t be interrupted. I’ll use the same expression here to say that I won’t be posting anything for few days.

I’ve managed to trigger a very annoying bug in WordPress that makes it much more difficult to edit posts before publishing them. I’m going to update WordPress and do some studying about its inner workings.

Beastly

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/NOV06/Beast.flv 400 300]

I listened to the audio commentary on the “Gojira: Godzilla” DVD, and besides King Kong, the then-recent movie “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” is cited as having been a major inspiration for Godzilla. So let’s watch a few beastly minutes from that. Look at those great old cars!

More Common People

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/ShatnerCommonPeople.flv 440 330]As promised, here’s the remake of Pulp’s Common People, narrated by the shameless William Shatner of all people, with Joe Jackson in excellent voice, doing the heavy musical lifting. Somehow, the combination works! Who’d a thunk?

The video is from The Tonight Show, of all places. ‘Would have expected SNL. The studio recording is on the audio player.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/CommonPeople.mp3]