Saddleback Craftsmanship

I admire solid craftwork in every sort of tool that I use. I consider bags tools. Whenever I hear my friend David Sparks talk about his custom "Indian Jones" bag from Saddleback Leather, I'm wracked with jealousy and covetous thoughts. The above twelve-minute docu-design ad makes my bag-carrying mouth water. None of it has to do with filmmaking or media or any of the tangential things I generally write about, but the actual mini-pseudo-process-doc itself qualifies.

The best bag I currently own is a Tom Bihn Ristretto that I use as a day satchel to carry my MacBook Air, notecards, my leather-bound journal, pens and so on. For some time, I've wanted a proper, heavy-duty leather bag. I studied Anthropology in college, and got into full-on Alan Grant/Indiana Jones mode, carrying various leather bags (many by the vile Wilson's chain I now despise in retrospect). All have disintegrated, had broken un-mendable seams, and otherwise failed.

I've come to admire real leather craftsmanship thanks to my wife introducing me to the world of horsemanship, and now I want some version of one of these even worse.

WOLF OF WALL STREET: Under the Effects

Virtuoso compositing work that once again emphasize that VFX don't have to be distracting, and quite the opposite. Translated from this article:

The work also owes much to its technicians. But their collaboration is often, paradoxically, invisible. However, their work on the special effects fills the screen. The company that insured those of "Wolf Wall Street "," Brainstorm Digital, "has released a video showing the film ... uncovered

To Quote From Whitman

"O me, o life..."

Interesting that Robin Williams stars in a new sitcom whose name is based on Apple advertising copy, and now one of his past performances is cribbed from for a very effective Apple ad.

GOTHAM: Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon, Before Zero Year

Hitfix has the details from the TCAs, where FOX president Kevin Reilly offered a few breadcrumbs worth noting:

Executive-produced and written by "The Mentalist"'s Bruno Heller and produced by Warner Bros. Television, the show won't have "a bunch of characters you've never heard of," Reilly promised. "We see Detective Gordon, before he's a commissioner, all the characters you know, Bruce Wayne, the Penguin, all of them. It's Gotham teetering on the edge, and we see what makes these characters become who they are, [like] Catwoman. It's an operatic soap that has a slightly larger-than-life quality to it."

I've loved Bruno Heller's The Mentalist, and the story of Bruce Wayne lends itself to TV so much more naturally than movies. Dark, gothic, and full of angst works when in the least Gossip Girl-y hand possible. This is something of a pre-origin story, occurring even earlier in the Gotham timeline than Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, or the currently-running re-origin story Batman: Zero Year by Scott Snyder. Heller is what should inspire a great deal of confidence here.

Michael Douglas is Hank Pym in ANT MAN for Edgar Wright

Marvel just made the announcement on their own site, showing another move toward leveraging their own platform and reach, and not relying as much on "exclusive" outlet reveals. It's now firm that Paul Rudd is playing Scott Lang. a former criminal who becomes the second Ant Man in Marvel continuity.

"With Hank Pym's rich history in the Marvel Universe, we knew we needed an actor capable of bringing the weight and stature to the role that the character deserves," said Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. "We felt incredibly relieved when Michael Douglas agreed to step into the part with the charm and fortitude he brings to every character he inhabits, and couldn't be more excited to see what he will do to bring Hank Pym to life."

I eagerly anticipate every Edgar Wright picture, and I also look forward to every Marvel movie. Mix in script collaboration with Joe Cornish, and you can count me as beyond excited with this additional piece in the puzzle now set. An older Hank Pym up against a protagonist anti-hero Scott Lang makes the mind reel with possibilities. Making changes to chronology and continuity as compared to the comic source can be dangerous (and sometimes awful), but I trust Wright/Cornish more than I could anyone with this material.

Variety erroneously ran the story as an exclusive (still labeled that way as of this writing) and their headline indicated Hank Pym would be the villain of the piece, both of which have been acknowledged on Twitter by the post author.

Armond White Expelled from NY Film Critics' Circle

It's rare that the expulsion of a film critic from their critics' organization gets this much attention, or this much applause. I can't think of a time when a story like this was even news. Owen Gleiberman writes up the wherefores in a nigh-eulogistic tone, but Armond White is a man no one would ever call Caesar, nor this action some sort of sinister plot against him.

The reason that the whole incident, to me, was sad is that Armond White is a critic I have defended, and at times championed, for being an extraordinarily vital voice: not a soft one, to be sure, but a demanding and even important one. As a critic, he is passionate, perverse, furious, infuriating, insightful, obtuse, humane, ruthless, fearless, out of his gourd, and, at his best, outrageously exciting to read. A lot of people despise him, because he can be a bully in print, and he wears the I-stand-alone perversity of his opinions far too proudly, like a military armband. Yet much of the dismissal of Armond is itself way too dismissive. He’s an embattled critic, but one who is often at war with the lockstep tendencies in our culture, and that’s a noble crusade. Sure, there are days when he says that a Transformers movie (or a bad Brian De Palma movie) is superior to anything by Richard Linklater or Steven Soderbergh, and you want to go, “Enough, stop!” But there are other days when he slices through the piety of adoration that surrounds certain movies. He’s a reckless master at unmasking cultural prejudices.

My friend Jeremy Smith rightly pointed out White's opinions on De Palma and Spielberg being amazingly incisive on Twitter, and there's a great deal of his writing that cuts through versions of reality promoted by filmmakers and their "teams" in an effort to make them look more uniquely brilliant.

Of course, he also called White Chicks and Little Man two of the best movies of their respective release years.

The Counterintelligence of Pulling THE ASSETS

Deadline reported this a day or so before my wife and I caught up on the two episodes that have (and apparently ever will) air.

The Assets started off with a dismal 0.7 rating for its premiere last Thursday and managed to fall even lower last night, to a 0.6, which qualifies as the lowest rating for an hourlong original on the Big 4 networks this season and likely ever. In its defense, The Assets does not hail from ABC’s entertainment division but from ABC News as it is based on real events. The Cold War spy drama doesn’t have stars in it and didn’t get any marketing. There is no plan yet for the six unaired [e]pisodes.

Blaming the show's failure on Nielsen ratings is a smokescreen. Nielsen ratings and their longstanding inaccuracy and corruption only matter in the fantasy fiction world of network meeting rooms. After all, the Nielsen family is dead.

The Assets told the "based on true events" story of CIA mole Aldritch Ames in the early 1980's. I enjoyed what I saw, and the notion of it as an eight-part limited series made it digestible and marathon-able once it was all done, even if we didn't do old-school appointment viewing.

So, what happened? The series was a product not of ABC Studios, but ABC News, as stated above. My unfounded guess is that in the very, very political world of television brinkmanship, I have a feeling the entertainment division didn't want to let the News division edge in on their turf. In TV, one exec's pet project failing is seen to help the success of someone else's.

I hope someone broadcasts it somewhere. ABC already spent the money on it, so they might as well give it to Netflix for a small pile of cash or in a larger package. That a major network would cancel a miniseries and instead air reruns is a sign of the impending death of the current broadcast model.

Below, a 1997 Nightline interview with one of the agents (portrayed in the miniseries) who caught Aldritch Ames:

…and an hour-plus presentation by Sandy Grimes at the International Spy Museum:

Grandmasters: Scorsese/Wong

Two titans of modern cinema talking for 20 minutes is my version of an opulent dessert. What I would do for a series of these such interviews in the style of Hitchcock/Truffaut (get the book or listen to the twelve hours of raw audio).

Originally posted by Deadline, they include one of my favorite bits of trivia about Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster: it was shot on film.

...he knew the end was near and his digital career would soon begin when Fuji sent him the last film stock during the long shoot accompanied by a letter that said it would be the last shipment. No more film.

It's a shame that the US home video release of the film does not include the longer, superior Hong Kong cut.

A China-Sized Door Opens for Nintendo

This is the biggest news on the business side of console gaming in 13 years, ever since consoles were banned in China back in 2000.

Consoles such as the Wii U and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation were banned under a 2000 rule to protect youths from the perceived corrupting influence of video games. Nintendo’s prospects for meeting its sales and profit forecasts this year depend on winning sales amid new devices from Sony and Microsoft Corp. released in the past two months.

“Nintendo has to explore markets in Asia, including China, in order to increase its sales and profit,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Holdings Inc. in Tokyo. “China is a promising market, even though there is a risk games will be pirated.”

In the same way Western companies like Google/Android (and to an extent Microsoft) have had trouble making nice with Chinese censorship laws, I can see some issues for both Microsoft and even Sony that won't be as big an impediment for Nintendo. I have a feeling Nintendo will be quicker to integrate Weibo and Weixin (WeChat) than Sony or Microsoft, for example.

XBox One's Kinect integration, along with the wild west that is XBox Live, pair for a very significant pair of stumbling blocks to get past, but they'll surmount them. Microsoft has doubled down investing in-country:

Microsoft and BesTV New Media Co., a subsidiary of Shanghai Media Group, in September said they formed a $79 million gaming venture to take advantage of the new rules.

The violent and extreme content of many of the Xbox's most popular games may make things more difficult, to be honest, and their draconian standards for banning and bricking consoles remotely due to suspected piracy won't go over well.

Sony's past security issues with PSN accounts might be a difficult trust issue with Chinese consumers. That Sony is an Eastern company more accustomed to dealing with strict and sometimes odd censorship laws will help them, as will the less CCTV-ish features of the PS4 as compared to Xbox. Their stronger Asian developer/publisher gives Sony a major lead with content from genre that traditionally appeal more to Chinese and Japanese gamers.

Though diminished over the last generation, Nintendo's characters carry a great deal more embedded brand value with dedicated game players and especially kids. This is especially true of Eastern players who are not as First Person Shooter-obsesssed and whose lives revolve around their mobile phones more than in the West. The re-opening of the Chinese market, more than any single event this decade, convinces me that Nintendo will revisit their cell phone gaming strategy, but not in the manner that some have insisted that they should.

Like Apple and Amazon in their own respects, Nintendo does things a certain way for long-held business and design principles, no matter what John Gruber thought (with followup) last September, and for the exact reasons that he was soundly rebuked by John Siracusa. Nintendo's signature games rely on end-to-end design planning that includes Nintendo controlling the physical control scheme. They are still and will probably always be a conservative 100-year-old company run by 100-year-old men.

A Nintendo phone is not a crazy proposition, but it'll be done their own unique way if it were to happen. I just hope it isn't called Wii Phone U.

WWE Creates a "New" Network

I'm surprised that World Wrestling Entertainment didn't move sooner in creating a streaming network. For $10 per month, users have access to tons of back catalogue content in addition to each of their monthly "Pay Per View" mega-events:

In addition to new shows, the app will also grant you access to more than 100,000 hours of video-on-demand content, including every previous pay-per-view event from WWE, WCW, and ECW. It will become available on desktops and laptops and through the WWE app for iOS and Android, and the Kindle Fire. Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and 4, and Roku will also be able to access the network. The network will be available in the United States to start, with additional countries coming later this year and early next year.

I find most notable in the above not the official omission of AppleTV (the most bizarrely impenetrable platform for major streaming brands, oddly), but that WWE Network is going global. Since WWE control their worldwide SVOD rights, they have no reason to use middlemen (like cable and satellite providers) to sub-distribute them.

They needed CES so little to make this a big deal to their very dedicated following. I'm surprised they didn't just make a standalone event of their own, or build it into their signature Monday Night RAW show. As a result, this is the biggest announcement to come out of CES in five years, maybe ten.

I think of the BBC and ITV in the UK, whose blockbuster series Doctor Who & Sherlock, as well as Downton Abbey respectively, have fanbases with money to spend who want to avoid time-displaced spoilers. They have respective business interests, like sub-licensing to PBS in the States and BBC's own America variant, but there are still cable providers in the year 2014 who don't offer BBCA in HD, for crying out loud.

UPDATE from Twitter reader Tim Cooke (note the "e"):

@moiseschiu WWE didn't mention Apple TV for some reason but they gave out WWE branded Apple TV's to reporters and confirmed it for network

— Tim Cooke (@timcooke82) January 13, 2014

Oscar Host Linked to Pirated "Oscar" Movie

Andy Baio writes about the leaking of a Secret Life of Walter Mitty screener from the offices of The Ellen Show:

Oh, Ellen! If the watermark's accurate, this screener belonged to Ellen DeGeneres. But was it actually an Oscar screener? Probably not.

The watermark shows that the screener was created on November 26, 2013. According to Ken Rudolph's Academy screener list, he received the Walter Mitty DVD screener via UPS on December 19.

This is one of the most inopportunely timed and high-profile leaks of a secure screener. That this has gone lightly reported (and treated as anything but a controversy) is telling of either the stature of DeGeneres in the industry, or the lousy reviews of Mitty.

Screen Time 53: I <3 LaserDisc

On the latest Screen Time, I'm joined by superstar Blu-ray/DVD producers Charles de Lauzirika, Robert Meyer Burnett, and Brian Ward to discuss the world of special editions and supplements, the inevitable decline of physical media, and the future of home video presentation. We take a moment to touch on 4K/UHD and what it means for the next few years.

We also get a couple of exclusive tidbits: The X-Files is being remastered for both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and Shout! Factory's Pee-Wee's Playhouse set will not only be done before the holidays in 2014, but in all likelihood, much sooner.

In a bit of a new development, much of this WatchList is comprised of supplemental documentaries available on various Blu-rays, DVDs, and iTunes Extras packages.

Wreckage and Rage: The Making of Alien 3

As recounted by Charlie on the show, this doc has had more than one life, and took years to see the light of day in its original cut, resulting in Charlie initially having himself credited as Frederick Garvin, as in Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. The complete and final version of this is included on the Alien Anthology Blu-ray box set.

Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner

Another great piece by Charlie, this truly completes the Final Cut version of the movie, and is thankfully included as part of the iTunes Extras download for those who've moved away from discs already.

Gladiator (3-disc Extended Edition DVD)

Charlie related how they hid an easter egg in this specific release teasing a Gladiator sequel that has still yet to come to fruition.

Brazil (Criterion Collection) - Docs and "Love Conquers All" version
The Last Temptation of Christ (Criterion Collection) - Martin Scorsese's Video Journal

Charlie cited these two as among his favorite Criterion releases, due to the incredible insight into the struggle to make both of these masterpieces.

Time Bandits (Criterion Collection)
The Seven Samurai (Criterion Collection)
The Rock (Criterion Collection)

Brian is particularly fond of these: the first for its infinite re-watchability, the second for the outstanding docs included, and the last in particular for the memorable Ed Harris outtakes that give a look behind the curtain.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Criterion Collection)

Rob really loved being blindsided by the feature-length doc on the director, whom he was completely unaware of until watching this set.

"Missing Discs" longed for by the panel include Tuff Turf, Quick Change, Liquid Sky, Batman (1966 series), and did I mention Tuff Turf?

My Neighbor Homer-o

An advance peek at this weekend's episode of The Simpsons, which includes atmospheric touches from Spirited Away and direct nods to My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, and Princess Mononoke.

Dunham KO's in Round One

This idiot from The Wrap masquerades as a journalist while actually pursuing a career as "that guy".  Asking Lena Dunham why she does nude scenes in her HBO show was on the list of Hack Questions to Ask During the Season One Press Tour.

THE GRANDMASTER Blu-ray: US/International Cut Only

A freshly arrived press release confirms that the re-dated US Blu-ray for Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster does not include the longer Hong Kong cut. In an age of declining physical media purchasing, I think this is a big mistake (as usual with Asian releases) on the Weinstein Company's part.

...special features include THE GRANDMASTER: From Ip Man to Bruce Lee, A Conversation with Shannon Lee (Daughter of Bruce Lee), THE GRANDMASTER: According to RZA and Behind the Scenes footage.

Those extras don't make me feel like I'm missing anything by having imported the Hong Kong disc. If they send me a copy, I'll cover it here, but I can't convince myself to shell out for this one.

I prefer the longer version by a wide margin, but according to a conversation I had with Wong at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013, the US re-edit was done with his direct involvement, and he likes it. Contrary to the alarmism of others, I like that there are two cuts the director is happy with, since it's the musical equivalent of a remix.

Roku TV by TCL & Hisense = Boxee TV by ViewSonic

Roku making a TV set in partnership with TCL is the new Boxee making a TV set in partnership with ViewSonic...or, not.

I fail to see the "home run" here. OEMs Hisense and TCL don't have any brand recognition or shelf space at US retail, and the profit margins will have to be huge for retailers to give precious floor space to them over Samsung and others. Billions of hours of streamed content through a $40-100 "puck" does not mean that those same consumers are interested in buying a new TV to have their Roku built into the TV. Also odd: they aren't touching live OTA TV with a ten-foot pole, which doesn't jive with the cord-cutting ethos.

However, there won’t be any actual integration with live TV: Roku TVs don’t come with their own programming guide, and Wood told me that there are “no immediate plans” to allow app developers to overlay their apps over live TV.

Ben Kuchera Joins Polygon

One of the go-to sites for gaming industry editorial and reportage has gained a hell of a new set of fingers. His first post for the site is insightful and as sharp as one expects from Kuchera, looking at the phenomenon of unfinished games succeeding in sales:

This is a controversial one, but you need only look at popular games such as Starbound, Don’t Starve, Planetary Annihilation, DayZ, Nuclear Throne, Rust and Kerbal Space Program to see how many people are taking advantage of the ability to sell a game before it’s "done," and making their community part of the development effort.

Annotating Sherlock

Leslie S. Klinger has been fighting a battle for years to bring the Sherlock Holmes canon entirely into the public domain, where it should have been for some time. Just before the beginning of the new year, a court judgment came down in favor of him and, if you ask me, history. In celebration, I highly recommend the following for the discerning Sherlockian's personal library: Klinger's magnificent annotations of the entire Sherlock catalogue, including the two-book short stories slipcase set and the separate third volume, which includes the novels.

Screen Time #51: Making Out with Stephen Fry

A fun interview that I intentionally held for the end of the year, and only partially because the title was fun.

Ioan Gruffudd is more than just a handsome face. His filmography denotes as much. If you know it very well at all, you know from whence the title of this episode comes. I should add that I love Stephen Fry, and have been working for a few months preparing a regular feature that has to do with him and Hugh Laurie.

This post will be updated soon with WatchList recommendations.