Want some incredible news? The Daily Show used to have many clips from the show up on the Comedy Central website, but the whole collection was incomplete and it was impossible to find anything.
But no more! Today Comedy Central launched thedailyshow.com which has 9 years of Daily Show archives available and easily searchable. And the videos can be rated, so ideally the best clips will eventually have the highest ratings and be easy to find. Which means no more worrying about the clips that used to be on Comedy Central for only a limited time or getting pulled off of YouTube, like the Colbert banana clip that I ended up uploading on this site.
I finally found a clip Mark and I had been wanting to watch again forever, Steve Carell warming his hands on the Olympic torch:
Recently there's been a lot of shenangians surrounding 2 different DVD releases. In both cases, I've held off getting the movies that are already available on DVD because I found out that they were bare-bones releases and something better was coming down the road. The two releases (or technically 3 right now) are Kill Bill and Blade Runner.
Kill Bill: For the unaware, Kill Bill was originally envisioned as one movie by Tarantino, but obviously that would have run quite long and the studio pressured him into splitting it into two films. Knowing that makes things interesting because as two films you really notice the second half is dramatically different than the first. The first is more action and suspense-driven, while the second was more dialogue and drama-driven. The international version of the film was actually released as a single movie. So many of the hardcore fans got the import version of the DVD. When the US DVD was released though, Tarantino had said he intended to recut the movie as originally intended and call the new movie The Whole Bloody Affair, and even re-release it into theaters. He also explained that was why the Kill Bill DVDs that have already come out didn't have much bonus content on them. From Wikipedia:
In the United States Kill Bill: Volume 1 was released as a DVD on April 13, 2004 while Volume 2 was released August 10, 2004. As of October 2007, only the basic DVDs have been released, with almost no special features.
In a December 2005 interview, Tarantino addressed the lack of a special edition DVD for Kill Bill by stating "I've been holding off because I've been working on it for so long that I just wanted a year off from Kill Bill and then I'll do the big supplementary DVD package."
He ended up working on Grindhouse between, and it looked like the DVD release had fallen off the map. But recently some people noticed Amazon had The Whole Bloody Affair listed with a December 2007 release date (though it now says they don't know when it will be in stock).
The version might apparently have an NC-17 rating because of more violent scenes that were removed from the US theatrical releases (which means it might not make it into many retail outlets). And as a single movie it clock in at just over 4 hours (247 minutes).
Blade Runner: This release is even more ridiculous. Some people consider Blade Runner the greatest Sci-Fi movie ever made, while others find it slow (including Ebert, who said it's plot was "thin"). It didn't make a splash in theaters when it first came out in 1982, probably not helped by the fact that it came out against E.T. There was already controversy then. Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott were at odds over the movie and they made Harrison add all these voiceovers which he felt were unneccessary. His reaction from this year:
"When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a fucking nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck re-creating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests."
So the movie's theatrical cut was liked by some and not by others. In 1990 Warner Bros. started screening a workprint of the film and Ridley Scott found out it was being called the Director's Cut even though he had nothing to do with it and it was missing a key piece - the original soundtrack. So they created a true Director's Cut that he signed off on, but it was still rushed and he didn't have much say in it. That was the version that went on to become one of the first movies released on DVD.
Scott has since complained that time and money constraints, along with his obligation to Thelma & Louise, kept him from retooling the film in a completely satisfactory manner. While he is happier with the 1992 release of the film than with the original theatrical version, he has never felt entirely comfortable with it as his definitive Director's Cut.
In 2000, Harrison Ford gave his view on the Director's Cut of the film saying, although he thought it "spectacular," it didn't "move him at all." He gave a brief reason: "They haven't put anything in, so it's still an exercise in design."
Finally around 2000 Scott went back and made the "Final Cut" with some new special effects and surround sound. That would have been finished and become the "special edition" DVD in 2001, but they ran into a bunch of legal problems and didn't resolve them until last year.
Which brings to the end of 2007, when there's now 7 different packages coming out, with various versions of the movie available. 3 Standard DVD packages, 2 Blu-ray, and 2 HD DVD. The biggest package is 5 discs, with the theatrical, director's cut, final cut, workprint, and international versions of the film. If you ever finish watching that, there's 90 minutes of bonus material too.
In the current chaotic state of the music industry with big labels battling out contracts with legit download services (a la iTunes) and fighting people pirating music for free, all while refusing to change their business model, it's nice to see people embracing change. Why sit there fighting the digital download model when embracing it can give you new and better ways of distributing music?
The music labels seem to have trouble even thinking about moving in a new direction, but many people have voiced the need for a new model, and finally it's coming. It's been happening in baby steps with websites like amiestreet popping up to help indie artists get their music exposed. At that site, the more popular a song becomes, the higher it's price goes. All songs start out free, and top out at 98 cents. So if you discover a popular song early, you'll get a deal on it.
But this week has significantly upped the ante on new distribution models as both Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are independently distributing their music. Radiohead is making their new album available for download on a website where you can choose how much you want to pay for their album, even if it's $0. They also have a collector's box set for much more, which includes a second disc and a bunch more for the hardcore fans.
Radiohead lets you pick your price to download their album
Nine Inch Nails had 1 record left in their contract with Universal Music Group, but apparently Universal let them out of their contract. Probably because Trent Reznor has been quite public in how much he hates the music industry and their pricing. On the main nin.com page today, he posted:
"Hello everyone. I've waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed."
If you aren't convinced that he is really happy about this, here's what he said at a concert in Australia this past September:
"Last time I was here, I was doing a lot of complaining about the ridiculous prices of CDs down here. And that story got picked up and got carried all around the world and now my record label all around the world hates me, because I yelled at them, I called them out for being greedy fucking assholes. I didn't get a chance to check, has the price come down at all? I see a no, a no, a no... Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means - STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right."
So I think odds are pretty good that he's not headed back to any major label anytime soon :)
The message here is clear. If the music industry doesn't start adapting and quit treating even those who are legally buying music like criminals (with restrictions on how the purchases can be used) and like fools (by overcharging to pad their profits and not the artist's), the artists are ready to move forward without them. Radiohead and NIN aren't the first ones to take this approach, but they're probably the two biggest artists to go this route so far. With services like Amie Street becoming more common, even the counter-argument that smaller bands wouldn't have a way to get discovered without big labels is starting to dissolve.
Update: Ian Rogers, the general manager of Yahoo Music, had a great blog post about this same topic:
But now, eight years later, Amazon's finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that's simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync'd them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.
8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, "if we build it they will come"? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn't gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.
I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
If, on the other hand, you've seen the light too, there's a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.
But the content experience on the Web is crap. Go to Aquarium Drunkard, click an MP3. If you don't get a 404, you'll get a Save As... dialog or the SAME GOD DAMN QUICKTIME BAR FROM 1995. OMFG. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS ALL WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED IN 15 YEARS ON THE WEB? It makes me insane.
So we have media consumption experiences with no context (desktop media players) and an incredible, endless, emergent contextual experience where media consumption is a pain in the ass, illegal, or non-existent (the Web). FIX IT. Your fans are pouring their music-loving hearts into blogs, Wikipedia, etc and what tools have you given them to work with? Not much, unfortunately.
This is what I'm vowing to devote my energy, and Yahoo!'s energy to.
Last night's episode of The Colbert Report was hilarious, and I couldn't resist posting some pictures of some funny moments because he was being even more ridiculous than usual (throwing out hats, shirts, and Wriststrong bracelets to the audience, imitating every graphic that appeared on-screen, etc.):
Colbert throwing T-shirts to the audience
Colbert's lab accident prevention signs
Colbert's stint as the pimp 'Big White Chocolate'
Colbert claims he is Superman, then tells the audience to keep it secret
You know, Guinness has really got people figured out. Who hasn't pretended that when they drink beer, they're also drinking lots of little people? And little people playing percussion, at that.
Here's a tip, Guinness: I'd rather not have a beer that's "alive inside." That sounds terrible.
These seem way too good to be real, though some of the parts make it pretty convincing that what's going on is real...basically it's hundreds (or thousands) of people forming images using colors that they're either wearing or on cards that they flip. NCAA football card stunts have got nothing on these:
Here's a sneak peek of Thursday's half hour hour long 30 Rock premiere (put on YouTube by NBC). I'll preface it with TVSquad's funny letter to Tina (which I agree with, minus the Ugly Betty part):
First the apology, then the early look.
Dear Tina,
I've always liked 30 Rock, but I've never loved it. Maybe it was because my concentration was on Studio 60 or maybe it was because I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I watched the pilot. Or maybe I just didn't try to get into it because Thursday nights are really jam-packed (would it upset you to tell you that I watch Ugly Betty too?). I just never gave the show a chance to grow on me, though I did enjoy Alec Baldwin's performance as Jack.
But that all changed this past week when I bought the first season DVDs. Tina, I watched every single episode this past weekend (some twice) and I'm convinced it's an instant classic. The writing is so sharp and the cast gels so well together. My opinion of the show went from "like" to "true love" in just two episodes. With you and The Office on Thursday nights, it's "Must See TV" again on NBC.
Oh, and congratulations on the Best Comedy Emmy win!
Bob
And now here's the YouTube video of this week's sneak peek:
"A car that will leave its mark, without leaving a mark."
"Ready for the world, when the world is ready."
First of all, who were the ad wizards who came up with this one? Here, I got some great lines you should add to your commercial right away: "The car you drive when you drive a car," "It gets you places, without getting you places" and "The car that nobody asked for, and can't use yet because there's nowhere to fuel it."
This week's episode was pretty hilarious. The only problem was it felt a little long, and has me eager for it to go back to the half hour format. But there's still 3 more episodes in the one hour format to go first.
I had forgotten how much I miss the hilarity of this show though. The reason I felt it was long was some parts seemed to drag out, but there was definitely also more jokes than usual and plenty of quotable lines: "No Pam, you don't know me. You've just seen my penis."
Michael Scott's....fun run! [NBC]
It was interesting to see what has changed from last season...Ryan's got a pseudo-beard as he starts his job "at corporate," Pam isn't acting timid and looks a lot hotter because...she and Jim are finally dating! The way they "caught them on camera" was pretty funny. Which leads me to another point...Kevin was acting hilarious the entire episode. From his solitary clapping to his un-subtle mentions of Jim and Pam's relationship, he was great. As was Andy and his nipple-chafing problem.
Of course there was also trouble in Angela and Dwight-ville as he killed her dying cat. It seemed like Dwight was just being odd the whole episode and didn't get to act like the Dwight we've come to know. Hopefully we'll get back to Jim and Dwight shenanigans soon. Or Dwight and Michael ridiculousness. The two of them together are an unstoppable team.
