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De Trop Debuts. Trade Roughage 10/03/08
Eight movies crowd the multiplex this weekend; another JFK conspiracy theory movie; another zombie movie from Romero; another attempt for TWILIGHT to woo moviegoers who aren’t ridiculous, screaming teenage girls.

• You could fill a small multiplex just with new releases this weekend, as eight movies either open nationwide or significantly expand today. And yet most moviegoers will still likely choose Beverly Hills Chihauhua over everything else. Meanwhile, Michael Moore fans are sure to go for Bill Maher’s first-person doc Religilous, Michael Moore haters are sure to go for the conservative fantasy An American Carol and teens who are too cool for talking dogs are certain to put Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist at #2 on the box office chart. Will adults just stay home rather than have to choose from the rest, which includes Appaloosa, Blindness, How to Lose Friends and Influence Alienate People and Flash of Genius?
• A little bit JFK, a little bit Veronica Guerin: producer John Davis (I, Robot) will make a film about the conspiracy theory surrounding the death of columnist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen, who dug deep into the JFK assassination before she died mysteriously and suspiciously from a combo of drugs and alcohol.
• George Romero has begun shooting another zombie movie, this one set on an isolated island and seemingly focused on the issue of euthanasia.
• Still not acknowledging they’ve got a certain disappointment on their hands, Summit Entertainment continues it’s hopes that Twilight will be a blockbuster franchise. And despite it’s lack of appeal in any way to boys, the studio will attempt to woo the males with new action-centered trailers.

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Confessions of a Pirate
With the MPAA cracking down again on non-profit media duplication, Steven Boone gets ready to turn himself in.

I was planning to weigh in on this week’s big digital rights story, the MPAA’s lawsuit against Real Networks for releasing its new RealDVD movie-copying software, but that was at the top of the week. This is the Internet. Everybody said everything that’s to be said on the matter in the first two days or hours or minutes of this, um, controversy. It’s hard to work up any Real passion on the subject anyway, as nobody really likes Real Networks (onetime online audio pioneers, now junky iTunes wannabe) or the MPAA (aka the movie police). But it all seems kinda simple to me: big, ravenous companies trying to expand/protect revenue streams, dressing it up as a copyright/artists’ rights issue. Ancient stuff.

I remember, years ago, making a fake split-screen trailer for In the Realm of the Senses. I had used some freeware called FlaskMPEG to rip the video from its DVD source. Back then, my frail 500 Megs of RAM groaned and cursed at having to pull and re-compress that much video at one time, but she got done. The audience of two who watched the finished product applauded and begged for an encore. Then they begged me to get some help.

Two decades before that, I was crafting montages using two VCR’s with flying erase heads and stacks of VHS tapes from the library, redubbing the whole mess with music patched in from the audio cassette deck. If a videotape had Macrovision protection, I’d just camcorder the clip off the TV screen. The scan lines made for an “interesting” look. Five years before that, I was audio taping Star Trek reruns, because the family couldn’t yet afford a VCR, and “editing” out the commercial breaks via the PAUSE button. Sometime before that, I snapped a Polaroid of Big Bird or somesuch Muppet passing across the black-and-white 13-inch.

So this is a confession. I’m ready to turn myself in, tired of running. I hope there’s a fair and accurate way to determine what I owe (millions of dollars), and a dignified way of setting things right with all the people I’ve hurt. Duplicating Ho’wood product under any circumstances is a crime—or it should be, or maybe it really is…? Still confused.

Throughout the summer in East NY, I heard sirens and gunshots late at night. Surely the sounds of the drug and gang wars, but part of me wants to believe that some of that ruckus can be attributed to diligent law enforcement professionals taking down the bootleggers. And the remixers. And the media artists. And the archivists. And, sweet Jesus, the Sweders.

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