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Blu-Ray goes for the knockout blow

The news is everywhere: Warner, the last remaining major studio to support both high def video formats in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has announced that as of May they will support Blu-Ray exclusively.

Toshiba, owner of the HD-DVD patent? Suprised. And even better, Warner, unlike Universal when they went HD-DVD exclusive, didn’t take a dime.

Even though both formats are burdened with DRM, I have to say I love my Blu-Ray player – it’s amazing the difference in HD. I’m glad I made the right call. Thanks Warner!

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Bladerunner: The Final Cut

I headed to downtown Minneapolis Friday afternoon, and caught a screening of Bladerunner: The Final Cut.

It’s been 48 hours since I saw the film, and it touches me in a way few films do – I sit here and still struggle to put in to words the emotions Bladerunner evokes for me. From the themes of consumerism and humanism to the grim picture the film paints of the future, few science fiction films hold up as well as Bladerunner does after twenty-five years.

SFGate.com has an excellent review of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece as well.

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Blade Runner

I’ve previously mentioned my enthusiasm for Blade Runner (interesting, but horrible, flash website), and was happy to see (via the Digital Bits) today that the Final Cut will be opening in Minneapolis on Nov. 30th at the Uptown Theater. I originally saw Blade Runner when the Director’s Cut was screened in 1992 in Milwaukee, and you can count on me being at the Uptown to see this final version.

The Final Cut’s December release has me seriously considering getting a Blu-Ray player, the first film to do so.

Happy Birthday Bladerunner

Today is the 25th anniversary of Bladerunner. To celebrate, I’m off to watch the movie on the big TV with my laptop in tow to get some work done.

I was only 9 when this was released, but I still vividly remember seeing the re-release in 1992 at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee when the Director’s Cut was released. I love everything about this movie, and can’t wait for the box set later this year.

I’m still working my way through the Library of America collection of Philip K. Dick novels. I’ve read The Man in the High Castle and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch so far. I’m looking forward to Ubik and re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the story Bladerunner is based on.

Derivative Works

Big Media is nothing if not two-faced about the creation of derivative works. From the music industry busting re-mix artists – the same artists paid by the industry to promote their artists in dance clubs, to the film industry’s penchant for remakes. And how many movies made today are born from an original idea? Even this year’s Best Picture winner, The Departed, is a remake of a Hong Kong film.

Techdirt takes a look at this issue, using the story of the fans who re-made Raiders of the Lost Ark shot for shot starting in 1981 and taking the next 7 summers to complete it. As Techdirt points out, this couldn’t be done today. The author does a great job in pointing out the irony in the movie business on the subject of copyright.

Click here to read the article.

Bladerunner DVD Details

One of my new favorite blogs to read, Total Dick-head, devoted to everything Philip K. Dick, has the details on the next Bladerunner DVD release, via DavisDVD.

I love Bladerunner – it was really the Director’s Cut being released in theaters that really got me into it, as I remember going to the Oriental in Milwaukee to watch it, and just being blown away. The first DVD release was pretty poor – it was basically just the Laserdisc version slapped on to DVD without being remastered, and the quality is iffy at best. Bladerunner is by far the best adapation of a Philip K. Dick story (though A Scanner Darkly is the truest adaption), and the story, the visuals, and the acting were all top notch.

I eagerly await this release on DVD! Read the details on the 5 disc box set here.

MPAA censors film about itself

How do you stop a film that exposes how the film industry assigns a rating (G, PG, PG-13, R) to a film?

Rate the film NC-17. Rating a film NC-17 stops the movie from being advertised, limits which theaters will even show it, and effectively censors the message.

The Independent Film Channel (IFC) has stepped up and will show it uncut in Fall 2006, after the film’s debut at Sundance this January.

The film industry is broken – from the hypocrisy in how it rates films to how what films are made to it’s excuses why total revenue is down. And this just highlights how Big Media continues to abuse its power.

Evil Corporations #3: Macrovision

I haven’t done an Evil Corporations story in over two years, and it’s definitely time. The focus: Macrovision.

From their About Us page on their website:

Macrovision helps solve the global need for content protection, DRM and software licensing solutions.

Now we all know that I’m no fan of DRM or Digital Rights Management, and right there in their company description Macrovision makes it a point to let you knwo that’s exactly what they’re about.

Macrovision’s claim to fame was protecting VHS tapes in the 80s – did you ever try and copy a videotape from a rental store, and got those rainbow lines at the top and bottom? That’s them.

Even though it’s legal for you, as a consumer in the United States, to make one copy for backup and archival purposes, they make sure you can’t.

The latest story hitting the web today, is a follow-up to one from June. In June, Macrovision sent a cease and desist letter to Lightning UK!, makers of DVD Decrypter. DVD Decrypter lets you strip the DRM off a DVD so you can archive to a hard drive or make a physical copy. Macrovision claimed the ability to strip the DRM violated their patents.

Well, the latest story has Macrovision claiming they’ve bought out Lightning UK!, and sending takedown notices to websites hosting DVD Decrypter. I’m sure they paid off the original developer thinking if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em (ala Microsoft).

This is unfortunate for two reasons – one, reverse engineering should not be illegal, and in the U.S., under the DMCA, it now is. Two, if the developer had released this under a free software licenses, such as the GPL, the code would be in the wild. Now, due the evil greed of one corporation, we’re going to lose the ability to back up our DVDs. I know, as the father of 2 (almost three!) children, that I want to back up the movies they watch a lot and put them on a home theater PC. No more scratching and wrecking movies – which has happened with a few already.

But no, I’m no longer allowed to. And that’s why Macrovision is being added to my list of evil corporations.