Fan Fare
Entertainment behind the scenes
“The Informant!” Matt Damon feels fine looking fat
Much has been made of superstar Matt Damon adding 30 lbs of heft to take on his new role in Steven Soderbergh directed movie “The Informant!”. The movie hits U.S. theaters on Sept. 17, but it premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this week. You can read about it here.
“The Informant!,” whose backers hope to win an award for Damon playing a corporate whistle-blower in a U.S. agri-business, also debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. On Friday in Toronto, Damon was talking to the media about his role.
Notably, the most asked question was about the extra junk he put in his trunk. How’d he do it? Mostly by eating pizza and drinking beer, he said. And Damon, perhaps uncharacteristically of a movie star once named People’s magazine’s sexiest man alive, said he liked carrying the extra pounds! He also said fans watching him shoot the movie in the midwestern U.S. would tell him he looked good with his wig, mustache and full face.
Or, were they lying? You be the judge, click below to watch.
Piracy sinks Fox columnist Roger Friedman
In the high stakes battle over piracy in Hollywood, a Fox News columnist lost his job on Monday after he reviewed a pirated copy of the upcoming movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Roger Friedman is a big name in Hollywood entertainment news, but media reports say that fact did not protect his job when his corporate colleagues at 20th Century Fox called for his head, nor did it help that Friedman wrote a positive review of the movie (which has since been removed from the Fox website).
The New York Daily News reports that an estimated 75,000 people have downloaded the free, illegal copy of “Wolverine,” which stars Hugh Jackman, and the studio is concerned that the high interest in the film online could slash its box office appeal. But no one is saying that Friedman leaked the movie, he just reviewed it. In that sense, was his punishment too harsh?
The case is interesting because it illustrates how high the stakes are for piracy in Hollywood. As in past piracy cases, the studio has enlisted the help of the FBI, which is investigating the leak. This comes as federal lawmakers consider ratcheting up the pressure on movie pirates. On Monday in Los Angeles, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing in Los Angeles, where eager entertainment industry executives and filmmakers called for harsher penalties to prevent piracy, trade paper Variety reported. ”Che” director Steven Soderbergh told the congressional committee that showbiz types like himself should be “deputized” to track down pirates on their own. What would socialist revolutionary Che Guevara think?
With Hollywood increasingly flexing its muscles to go after movie pirates, Friedman is one of many in the future who will be forced to walk the plank.
DrDoug:
You are assuming that non-commercial, digital “piracy” is stealing. When someone steals something, what happens? The “thief” gains something while the “victim” loses something. When you watch a video file of a movie that you downloaded from someone who was sharing the file, what happens? You get to watch a movie file that someone else willingly shared with you AND the creators of that video don’t lose anything. They still have the movie, they still have the rights to the movie.
When you download a shared file, you steal NOTHING. The closest you can come to calling this type of “piracy” stealing is saying that the “thief” is the person who originally created the video file against the rights-holder’s wishes. But even then, the rights-holders have not lost any quantifiable amount of anything. At most it is a violation of some agreement, but it is NOT theft.
You might say that what was stolen is the profit they WOULD have made from the ticket sales of everyone who watched the shared file. But you can’t steal something that doesn’t exist. These made up “sales” never happened, so they are not “stolen.”
You also might say that what was stolen is the “experience” of watching the film. But it is impossible to tell if ANY of the people who watched the shared file would have paid for it if the file wasn’t available for free. The people watching the file may have only watched it BECAUSE it was free. Thus, if it wasn’t available, they still would never have paid for it.
Also, can you steal an experience? Again, no one lost an “experience” when you gained it. So what was stolen then?
Nothing.
Do not insult the victims of real theft by saying these huge corporations are just as victimized by digital “piracy” as someone whose identity was stolen, or someone whose car was stolen. That is extremely disrespectful and stupid.
Cannes Fare 8 – Madonna hits town
Steven Soderbergh’s 4-hour film “Che” stumbles in several early reviews, and Madonna hits town with her new documentary.
