Kicking off a little storyline in our usual oblique style.
YouTube blogs about its upcoming court fight with Viacom and how the media company has tried to have it both ways:
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
We go back to the beginning in this week’s installment.
Beginning a new series of things to amuse us and to give Birdie something to draw that’s not me making people say “funny” things. It should be fun!
I have nothing to add other than I need to see this immediately. (And the original, of course, but I am pretty sure I get the whole “It’s a robot geisha” thing fairly quickly.)
You wanted staff picks, you got Staff Picks.
Here’s a strip about comic book stuff.
Steve goes about making some repairs.
I was re-reading some old Captain America comics this afternoon for inspiration and came across this pretty spectacular fight between Cap and Batroc from Tales of Suspense #76, written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita. I’ve edited down a bit; there’s a few panels with people running and screaming “Holy fucking shit, Captain America is here to ruin our meticulous plans and we better leg it before OH GOD SHIELD TO THE HE–” that didn’t really need to be included but the gist is certainly present.
Thanks to Bully for sending me scans of the relevant pages so I don’t have to crack the spin on my Masterworks volume. You should go see what he did for the Ides of March.
As usual, let’s get the blah blah blah involving last week’s contest out of the way and give a big round of applause for Troy Wilson. Troy, the cheeky fuck, just mentioned a guest appearance and not an actual Daredevil story, but what the hell, let’s let him have it because The Death Of Jean DeWolffe does have a pretty great moment featuring by ol’ hornhead Congratulations, Troy!
This week, we’ve got a hardcover collection of the first eight or so issues of Harley Quinn, a comic I enjoyed more than I should have but really don’t need to keep around the house. Preludes and Knock Knock Jokes features the Joker’s better (?!?) half on her own, getting a crew together, and committing crimes. The art by the Dodsons really is the highlight of the thing, but Karl Kesel’s scripting helped the title stood out in an era of not-very-good Bat-family stories.
How do you win a copy of it? Leave a comment with, I don’t know, your favorite Harley Quinn moment in comics or on the Batman Animated Series. Does that sound good? Yeah, let’s go with that. This has to be something that has happened, not your masturbatory fantasies involving Veronica Mars or whatever her name is in clown makeup.
Just leave said comment before 12:01 AM on Saturday, March 20, 2010 to qualify and the winner will be chosen using Random.org’s random number generator. Previous entrants do, in fact qualify, because I’m such a nice fellow like that. Comments that don’t qualify (such as the person from last week who just said “I like Daredevil” without answering the question) will be deleted.
Terms And Conditions:
Please note that because of shipping costs, this contest is for residents of the United States of America and Canada. You must leave your email address with your comment to qualify, as I’m not going to spend any time hunting down someone who didn’t want to be contacted about their amazing prize. One comment per person and yes, I will know if you cheat and will probably mock you in public.
Harry Brown, directed by Daniel Barber from a screenplay by Gary Young, stars elder British statesman Michael Caine as a pensioner who takes the death of his closest friend at the hands of local hooligans very personally. Emily Mortimer, in a somewhat-quiet role in which she still manages to exude no small amount of strength, plays the detective investigations his friend’s death and the subsequent murders of those who attacked him. With two actors of that caliber on opposite ends of a screenplay, it’s easy to ignore the frequent wallowing in stereotype the script happily engages in, particularly when it comes to The Youth of England. It’s through the two leads’ abilities and Barber”s visceral direction and methodical pacing (with no small help from Martin Ruhe’s camerawork) that Harry Brown becomes something engaging and smart. Particularly strong is the final act that lifts rest of the film’s mass up significantly by dint of having at least one actual surprise in it.
It’s a movie that’s easy to overpraise because when it works, it sings, but there’s still significant problems in how it enforces storytelling cliché and laziness on the part of movies that attempt social relevance, even if it is highly entertaining to watch Michael Caine wreak Old Testament havoc on his inferiors one more time.
