ABC News has a surprising story up about a debate in the French government that led to an unexpected victory for file-sharers. When the country’s cultural minister introduced legislation that would have dealt jail time and a fine to those convicted of file sharing copywritten material over the internet, lawmakers instead endorsed an amendment that would make file-sharing legal as long as monthly royalty payments of $8.50 were paid for the privilege. From the piece: “‘To legalize the downloading of our music, almost free of charge, is to kill our work,’ venerable rocker Johnny Hallyday said in a statement. The […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 22, 2005The music-related Pitchfork Media is one of my favorite websites, and below I’ve linked two pieces from the site that have something to do with music and film. I thought I’d make it three with this link to a story up today about the U.K. band Underworld, whose “Born Slippy” was a big song on the Trainspotting soundtrack. The site reports that the members of Underworld are collaborating in an interesting way with Anthony Minghella on the soundtrack to his upcoming Breaking and Entering: “Furthermore, the lads have teamed up with acclaimed film director Anthony Minghella and composer Gabriel Yared […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2005Let’s make it two Pitchfork links in the row. I went to buy this 2CD compilation of the great Italian film composer Ennio Morricone’s 1960s and ’70s work for a variety of crime and other genre movies this weekend, and it was sold out everywhere. So, my review will have to wait, but here’s Pitchfork’s Joe Tangari with his take on Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance, the album compiled by Allan Bishop and Mike Patton. An excerpt: “More than setting the tone for Western scores for a generation, Morricone’s greatest legacy is perhaps the way he used sound elementally, largely […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2005Sony/BMG’s debacle over the “rootkit” copy protection on their music CDs has gotten a lot of hilarious press in the last few days. If you haven’t been following the story, the digital rights management software contained on Sony music CDs burrows deep into your operating system where it does Many Bad Things, including act as Trojan horse for a lot of malware and bad viruses. As documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, Sony/BMG has added insult to injury by concocting a draconian end-user license agreement that treats a CD-buyer like some sort of pauper out of a Dickens’ novel. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2005Somehow Filmmaker‘s proprietary search engine which scours the web to collect all manner of breaking indie film news missed the following announcement, which did not escape the sharp eye of The Reeler: R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet is now out on DVD. For those of you going “huh?”, think back to this year’s MTV Music Video Awards and that mid-show detour to Off-Broadway featuring pop star R. Kelly rapping, singing and emoting a tale of infidelity, bisexuality and a megastar hiding in a closet. Explains the publicist of the 12-part DVD film compilation, “What began as a simple music […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2005One of my favorite artist/photographer/music video directors, Floria Sigismondi, has massively updated her website with news of her forthcoming photography book, Immune (click through the opening image to get to photos from the book), as well as streamed versions of many of her videos, including her recent clip for The White Stripe’s “Blue Orchid.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2005The composer Jon Brion, who has done scores for directors such as Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, and Paul Thomas Anderson, has been getting a lot of ink this week for his producing and arranging work on the new Kanye West album. Here’s Rob Mitchum in Pitchfork Media, who compiles a 70-minute mixtape designed to update you on Brion’s eclectic body of work. From the piece: “The most talked about man in music right now is Kanye West, whose recently-released Late Registration album is already one of the most prominent critical battlefields of 2005. It’s no shocker that an expert […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2005… even Elton John music, is so much better than the formulaic trailer cutting that is rampant these days. You know, the fast music, cheesey step-zooms that aren’t in the actual movie, weird whooshing sound effects on the edits, even for dramatic films, switch to slow soulful music half way kind of thing?. This clip for Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, linked to first on Ain’t It Cool News, is a much better promo than what will probably come later… Check it out.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 23, 2005“And it seems to me to be almost the perfect life, really. I mean, I would like to be taller and have more hair [laughs] and things, but apart from those physical things I can’t really imagine how my life could be improved. I hope that doesn’t sound smug, but it is a pretty good life.” That’s British d.j. John Peel, the legendary musical tastemaker who championed and established bands like Joy Division and the Sex Pistols, as quoted in an interview on the B92 website as linked to by the ever essential Greencine Daily. Peel, 65, died yesterday, and, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 26, 2004