Your Daily Dosage

Wristcutters Has a Potential July Release Date - Controversy to Follow

Wristcutters: A Love Story apparently will receive a theatrical release this summer.  According to the Hollywood Reporter, the marketing campaign may run into some problems before it ever gets up to speed.  Apparently, they will contain  images of people committing suicide with additional detailing which act as "a reference to the film's romantic story line".  While I understand some might find this in poor taste, come on people, the movie is called WRISTCUTTERS, the protagonists of which committed suicide.  The descriptions of the promotional material sound like they are very much in line with the overall tone of the movie. 

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Warner's CEO Responds

According to the BBC, the CEO of Warner Music finds Steve Jobs' DRM views "without logic and merit."  Perhaps he should view his reprimand of his children for illegal downloads "without logic and merit" given the zeal with which the RIAA has pursued its current cadre of lawsuits. 

DVD recommendations for this week

Hollywoodland, Flags of our Fathers, and the Science of Sleep all are out today.  All are notable DVDs for the week at DVDTalk.  Reviews are available as well.

Updates may be tardy for the next week

A hard drive crash has taken down my main system and at present this is interfering with our ability to post regularly.  However, this has given me a great opportunity to evaluate various data and hard drive recovery tools.  Look for an in depth article to come.

Steve Jobs and DRM

Steve Jobs has posted an essay at Apple discussing DRM, iTunes, and the iPod.  He outlines both why Apple encumbers iTMS purchases with DRM and why licensing FairPlay (the DRM system) is not feasible according to the contracts Apple honors with the music industry.

"Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free ... Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."

Mr. Jobs also points out that, on average, only 3% of the music on any given iPod has been purchased through the iTMS.

UPDATE

MSNBC  has coverage, Daring Fireball has commentary, and the Macalope  brings the funny (but, by the way, Jack Valenti is the former president of the MPAA - Mitch Bainwol is the CEO of the RIAA)

Set Wristcutters Free!

Wristcutters:  A Love Story was initially shown with great reception at Sundance 2006.  This movie has an 86% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.  Why has it not seen even a limited release?  Granted, the subject matter is a little, shall we say dark, but the overall film itself is uplifting.  IMDB lists September 2007 as the next USA release.  In the meantime, the teaser trailer is shown below.

Downloading the Academy Award Nominees

Waxy.org has written a nice article on the ease with which pirated copies of films nominated for the 79th Academy Awards can be found.  From the article: 

"I researched every nominated film, excluding the documentary and foreign film categories. Out of those 34 films:

• Academy members received screeners for 30 out of 34. (Everything except Click, Monster House, Poseidon, and Black Dahlia.)
  
• 31 out of 34 films were released online in some form,
  including camcorder footage. (Everything except Letters from Iwo Jima,
  Notes on a Scandal, and Venus.)
  
• 24 screeners were leaked online. (In several cases, they were leaked months before Academy screeners were mailed.)
  
• The average length of time between a film's USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.
  
• 9 screeners appeared online before they were mailed to Academy members.
  
• On average, a screener appears online 24 days before it's received by Academy members. (Excluding these early leaks, the average time is 13 days.)"

Of course, many of the films released earlier in the year have been officially released on DVD.

For Your Consideration ...

The nominees for the 79th Academy Awards were announced today, and for the most part, the list is a respectable one, devoid of mainstream, blockbuster movies.  Children of Men is much more deserving than The Queen for the best picture nomination.  Thankfully, the Academy did not give Dreamgirls a "Best Picture" nomination.  This prevents the Academy from repeating their boneheaded mistake in 2002 when Chicago (I think I threw up a little) won the award over two exceedingly superior films:  The Hours and The Pianist. 

My longshot prediction is the following:  Martin Scorses and Clint Eastwood will split the vote and Paul Greengrass (director of United 93) will pick up the Oscar. 

Upcoming DVD Alert - The Science of Sleep

According to IGN, Michel Gondry has succeeded again.  This time The Science of Sleep "fulfills the director's promise as a teller of idiosyncratic and beautiful stories".  His earlier Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (penned with Charlie Kaufman) is one of my most favorite movies.  This received only limited release and I have looked forward to its DVD release on February 6th. 

A Scanner Darkly

With the vast majority of dialogue drawn from its source material,  A Scanner Darkly is a fabulous adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's seminal novel A Scanner Darkly.  Done in the same rotoscoped style of Linklater's earlier film Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly follows an undercover drug agent as his reality slowly slips away.