Keep Matus Away From Sharp Objects

Here's the trailer for the new Xbox game: The Beatles Rock Band.

More The Beatles: Rock Band Info

Land of the Lost

Variety's Brian Lowry has just reviewed Land of the Lost and it comes down hard:

Hinting at the perils in synergy, "Land of the Lost" conspicuously feels as though someone at Universal was already planning the theme-park ride spinoff before taking a painfully wrong turn with the movie. Modernizing a 1970s children's TV show known for its cheap special effects offered certain possibilities, but the filmmakers have traded in any kid-friendly elements for bathroom humor of dinosaur-sized proportions. The result is a movie with an exceedingly narrow target aud that should test Will Ferrell's appeal among boys maybe ages 12-14--about the only demo likely able to endure this laborious mess.

But maybe the ride will be fun.

Hulu on Your TV

That's the Holy Grail, isn't it? If you could easily put Hulu on your television set (and I don't count the current hack-arounds as easily), then you could basically check out of the cable grind. Today there's a rumor that Roku, the people who first put Netflix streaming onto your TV, might be trying to do the same with Hulu.

My first thought was, Hey, I'd drop Comcast like a bad habit.

But I'm not so sure, because cable has one totally killer app: sports.

I think it was Rupert Murdoch who said, on the occasion of his purchase of Manchester United, that sports broadcasting was the only content that couldn't be time-shifted or packaged as on-demand. For the most part, I think that's true. You can try to watch your French Open broadcast the day after on DVR, but for any mainstream sport, it doesn't seem practical. Who's going to watch an NFL game a day after?

But more to the point for cable, sports are the one area where there is no model for how their broadcast could be de-bundled from the cable package. And add to this, that sports benefit tremendously from high-definition. So if you love sports, it would be pretty hard to give up cable even if you were getting all of your scripted entertainment from a set-top interface with Hulu.

James Cameron and Hollywood Career Economics

A very interesting tidbit from a Q&A with Cameron:

He did take a non-Avatar question when someone asked about “having other people take over franchises that you created.” He got a huge laugh when he cut to the chase and said, “oh Terminator?” He then said that he basically traded the rights for Terminator for a directing career and then when Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to do T3, his heart just wasn’t in it, though he had a few ideas. He said the producers “ran off with the rights, which caused some bad blood” and so when Arnold asked him after they were going in a different direction, Cameron told him, “just do me one thing – ask for more money than anyone ever has.” Arnold said, “reeeeealllly?” He said, “yes. Because what idiots would make a Terminator movie without you?”

And then one other funny bit:

Somebody also asked about his reputation as a hardass on set and compared him with Michael Mann, to which Cameron jokingly replied, “What? Michael Mann’s a whacko.”

King of Kong

This is kind of cool--watch one of the guys from King of Kong try to set a new Donkey Kong high score. Live.

Watch live video from G4TV - Steve Wiebe Donkey Kong Cam on Justin.tv

Xbox > Wii?

Microsoft thinks they've found a way to trump the Wii. Will be interesting to see how it works.

Anchorman

Fast-forward to the 1:05 mark to watch a great moment in local news.

Realtors and Defamation

Galley Friend B.W. sends us this story about a pair of LA realtors suing CSI for defamation.

I don't know much about defamation law (specifically, how it's different from libel law), but I wonder if realtors who advertise extensively, using images of themselves, count as public figures.

The Left's Harriet Miers Non-Moment

The Harriet Miers nomination was one of the few bright moments for conservatives during the Bush administration. Nearly every conservative intellectual outside the precincts of Townhall.com stood up to oppose Miers--not because she wasn't conservative enough or reliable enough--but because she was, by any reasonable standard, neither smart enough nor accomplished enough for the job. Her nomination was the worst of mix of identity politics and cronyism. And for the first time since 9/11, conservatives were willing say, Hold on--I didn't sign up for this.

Clearly, the left has not gotten to that point with Obama. Because if they had, they'd be jumping off the Sotomayor bus rapido. The problem with Sotomayor isn't her politics. She's a lefty. So is Obama. He won and the Dems control the Senate, so that's their prerogative. The problem is that she's a grievance warrior with ideas about race and racialism that are supposed to be out of bounds. Absolutely nobody is making the argument that she's the most intellectually qualified person in America for the gig. And there seems to be at least some evidence that her temperament leaves something to be desired.

President Obama can appoint--and probably get confirmed--anybody he wants. So why not pick a devastatingly smart lefty? Was Elena Kagan busy? Was Cass Sunstein out of town? Shouldn't the left demand as much from Obama? After all, nearly anyone can give you the vote you want. It takes a good deal more to advance or defend an agenda. If I was a liberal Obama supporter, I'd be pretty despondent right about now.

(Mind you, there's one other possibility: It could be that the left sees identity politics itself as the core of their intellectual belief system. In which case they could rightly view the Sotomayor nomination as a victory, the medium being the message and all that.)

But all the evidence suggests that the left is in for a penny, in for a pound.

Obama keeps disappointing them--wiretapping; no Iraq withdrawal; an escalation in Afghanistan; support for torture; no movement on gay issues; little transparency--and they keep rolling right along with him.

Of course, on the one hand, you dance with the one that brought you. On the other, take a look at the GOP to see what loyalty in the face of mistakes gets you at the end of the day.

If you'll recall, liberals were thrilled with the idea of Harriet Miers being on the Supreme Court. They were prepared to pound the table and vote against her, but they thought she was the best they (if not the country or the law) could hope for. Conservatives are now in a similar position.

PS: The Gormogons note that in his introduction to Sotomajor, President Obama said that SCOTUS judges have to interpret principles first more on paper "20 centuries ago."

It sure is great to have a con-law scholar as president.


Update: Hugh Hewitt--pro-Miers and pro-Sotomayor! Paint the map red!

Is Sotomayor a Sailerite?

Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" > "White male" remark is getting all the attention (and why a White "male" and not a White "man," by the by?) but this is what snapped my head around:

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.” [emphasis added]

Isn't that viewpoint normally beyond the pale? (So to speak.) Or is it only career-destroying when Steve Sailer brings it up?

Update: For all her bravery in bringing racialism, it's pretty easy to "terrify" Sotomayor.

Also, I understand that the position of Supreme Court Justice is slightly higher on the prestige meter than Attorney General of the United States, but to argue that "to Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark" seems to completely forget AG A.G., no?

Or maybe the real lesson is: Only Democrats get credit for diversity hires.

Just Asking . . .

If the Denver Nuggets meet the Orlando Magic in the Finals this year, would you give up all conspiracy-theorizing about the NBA? I might.

Kinsley Watch

Can you name five less gracious journalists than Mike Kinsley? Journalism being what it is, this should be easy, but I can only think of two or three off the top of my head.

Oh, in case you don't have time to click through the link, Kinsley wants you to know how much he hates his former boss at Time--and how stupid the guy is! Which is weird, right, because Kinsley was such a class-act when he took job.

Even More Surf Porn

From Riding Giants, just for Galley Friend P.G.:

Change Is Coming

So you better get out of the way!

Who will be the first to read the new V as a critique of Obama-ism?

I don't know. But it would make a fantastic bookend to any LoTR-as-defense-of-Bush exercise . . .

The Ewing Fix

Always remember, never forget.

Voting Coalitions and American Idol

Most people seem surprised by Kris Allen's win over Adam Lambert last night on the Idol finale. I'd argue that the result wasn't as unexpected as you might think.

My household voted for Kris (almost entirely on the strength of his cover of "Heartless," which was the best performance of the season), but I submit that Adam was, at nearly ever turn, the superior candidate. His final night performance was better, his body of work over the course of the season was better, and he's a more saleable commodity as a recording artist in the future. By nearly every metric, he should have won.

Except that there were some indications that Adam had somewhat polarized the voters. Late in the show he finished in the bottom three. And when the show went down to three contestants two weeks ago, it was Adam and two other, virtually indistinguishable, guys. At that moment, it appeared most clearly that there might be a substantial "Not Adam" vote that had been split in the later stages of the competition, but was slowly congealing. From there, it hardly mattered whether it Kris or Danny in the final. One of them would get the other one's vote as the "Not Adam" vote finally consolidated.

So why not Adam? Drudge was teasing this as a Red State-Blue State showdown, but I think that's not quite right. Adam is personally pretty appealing, but his two wheelhouses--glam rock and showtunes--are violently at odds with the musical norms of the series. And worse, when he let them mix, became something weirdly unsettling: American culture has, thankfully, closed the book on the rock opera.

Ultimately, I think that's what did Adam in.

Mind you, I suspect he'll ultimately have the more productive career. But these things are hard to project. I don't know that you could have predicted that Carrie Underwood would have, by far, the best post-Idol career. Or that Jennifer Hudson would win an Oscar.

And anyway, I still find David Cook the most interesting performer to come out of the show. It would be nice to see him break big.

Faint Praise

For Inglorious Bastards:

"[I]t is Tarantino's most sophisticated film since part one of Kill Bill."

Since Kill Bill Part 1, Tarantino has directed one and a half movies.

Netflix, Apple, and Subscription vs. PPV

Fascinating stuff about Netflix's Watch Now streaming from the company's CFO. The most interesting bit is this:

“The big question around Apple and Amazon is not what are they going to do in the pay-per-view space, it is what are they going to do when they realize they are not being very successful,” McCarthy said. “And [theirs is] all new-release content. Something else is going on.”

Important, if true.

Sherlock Holmes: Action Hero

Can't tell if it this is Wild, Wild West or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or worse.

Great Moments in Law Enforcement

I'd love to hear the rationalizations for this. The video is pretty amazing.

But the real scandal seems to be that the Birmingham police department had the video, and knew about the officers' actions, for months. And did nothing about it. It wasn't until someone in the DA's office saw it and took made a beef that the officers were fired.