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The Sound Of Midas

“There would be no offer that would tempt me… I actually really resent it.”

– Paul Simon, at about 5:00 in the video, on giving his song rights away

I remember that interview from back in the day (1986). Now, that he’s sold the catalogue:

“I’m pleased to have Sony Music Publishing be the custodian of my songs for the coming decades. I began my career at Columbia/Sony Records and it feels like a natural extension to be working with the Publishing side as well.”

Fine. Just don’t give the songs out to anyone. Don’t let Mrs. Robinson, Scarborough Fair, April Come She Will, and the Sound of Silence ever appear in anything except The Graduate.

I heard “Back In Black” on an Applebee’s commercial this weekend. I’m not hopeful.

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Will This Suck?

Who cares, you’re already paying for Netflix. Coming May 21!

From filmmaker Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s Justice League), ARMY OF THE DEAD takes place following a zombie outbreak that has left Las Vegas in ruins and walled off from the rest of the world. When Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a former zombie war hero who’s now flipping burgers on the outskirts of the town he now calls home, is approached by casino boss Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), it’s with the ultimate proposition: break into the zombie-infested quarantine zone to retrieve $200 million sitting in a vault beneath the strip before the city is nuked by the government in 32 hours. With little left to lose, Ward takes on the challenge, assembling a ragtag team of experts for the heist. With a ticking clock, a notoriously impenetrable vault, and a smarter, faster horde of Alpha zombies closing in, only one thing’s for certain in the greatest heist ever attempted: survivors take all.

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LOTR But With Low-Budget FX & Soviet Mood Music

The geniuses at Leningrad Television put out this masterpiece in 1991, a full ten years before Peter Jackson.

Cue up Gandalf’s eagle escape and elaboration at the Council of Elrond:

The above includes the entire first half of this 1 hr 50 minute extravaganza. More Fellowship of The Ring  excitement here.

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New Kung Fu

News to me:

In the ’70s, martial arts legend Bruce Lee pitched a series to Warner Bros. called The Warrior — centered on a Chinese martial artist traveling across America’s Old West. Ultimately, Warner Bros. rejected Lee’s pitch because it didn’t think audiences would tune into a Chinese-led television show. However, one year later, Warner Bros. launched Kung Fu, casting a white male lead (David Carradine) with no kung fu experience in a story that resembled Lee’s initial pitch.

The reboot is hoped to honor Lee’s legacy.

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Fair Use And Transformation

Lynn Goldsmith took the photo on the left. She recognized the Warhol silkscreen on the right as her material, and challenged the Warhol Foundation over fair use, in a copyright infringement case.

Fair use – when one artist can borrow from another without permission or payment – hinges on “transformation,” in the law. When the goals and function of the secondary work in question are quite different from the original, transformation is said to occur. Last month a New York appeals court found in favor of Goldsmith: they reversed a lower court decision, and said that the standard of transformation was not met.

Transformation is probably a deep, aesthetic, philosophical and cultural concept – so it’s comical when courts try to sort it out.

Right?

A few years back, a bevy of art critics declared that Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 sculpture called “Fountain” — a store-bought urinal he had presented, unchanged, as art — was the most influential work of the 20th century.