illustration by Julie Teninbaum
photograph courtesy Ferrari
tue, october 28
Watch
Tinker Bell
Once just a flitty supporting act, Tinker Bell will kick off the Disney Fairies franchise with her eponymous film. The movie, about pre -- Peter Pan life, features new pixies, including one voiced by Lucy Liu. Disney will release one straight-to-DVD episode each year until the quadrilogy is done. In an apparent concession to those crazy, quality-obsessed Pixar folks, it will then quit making direct-to-DVD toons, which are bad ("dreck-to-DVD") but good (the two Aladdin sequels alone grossed more than $300 million). So much for Cinderella IV. -- JLA
tue, october 28
Download
10th Anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
In 1998, President Clinton signed a law to criminalize circumventing copyright-protection technology. That's what killed free Napster and why you still can't share songs bought from iTunes. But tech-related legislation may go obsolete almost as quickly as the innovations it tries to govern: This year, the major music labels have begun to ditch the fencing known as Digital Rights Management, rendering DMCA moot for many Americans. David Pakman, CEO of eMusic, which sells DRM-free MP3s, says the new thinking is that companies "should license content for sale as many places as you can." He says the labels "also need to change their economics." In other words, if music were cheap enough, people would buy. -- JLA
fri, october 31
Trick or Treat
Halloween
Candy corn + jack-o'-lanterns + wax vampire teeth + slutty French-maid outfits that somehow (please, God) never seem to go out of Halloween style = $5.1 billion in retail spending. Boo! -- JC
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
