Of Foxes and Wolverine Workprints...

[InvisibleWolfMan]

Friends, Dwellers, countrymen, lend me your ears;

www.hitfix.com/posts/2009-4-3-fox-condemns-early-review-of-leaked-wolverine

www.aintitcool.com/node/40652

I come to bury Friedman, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Friedman. The noble McWeeny has told you Friedman was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault and grievously has Friedman answered it.

Here under leave of McWeeny and the rest --- for McWeeny is an honorable man --- so are they all honorable men --- come I to speak in Friedman's dismissal. He was to many a friend, faithful and just to all --- but McWeeny says he was ambitious and McWeeny is an honorable man.

He has brought many readers home to foxnews.com whose ransoms did fill the general coffers. Did this in Friedman seem ambitious?

When the poor have cried for reviews, Friedman has typed them out --- ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Yet McWeeny says he was ambitious and, sure, he is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what Mcweeny spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause.

What cause witholds you then, to mourn for him now?

Oh judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason.

Bear with me. My heart is in the cardboard box here with Friedman and I must pause 'til it come back to me.

But yesterday the word of Friedman might have stood against the world; now he lies there.

And none so poor to do him reverence.

Oh masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do McWeeny wrong, and Beaks wrong, who, you all know, are honorable men.

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose to wrong the dismissed, to wrong myself and you, than I will wrong such honorable men.

But here's a parchment with the seal of Friedman --- I found it in his MY DOCUMENTS folder, 'tis his will: Let but the people hear this testament, which, pardon me, I do not mean to read, and they would go and kiss dead Friedman's wounds and dip their napkins in his sacred blood, yea, beg a hair of him for memory, and, dying, mention it within their wills, bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue.

Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it; it is not right you know how Friedman loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; and, being men, bearing the will of Friedman, it will inflame you, it will make you mad! 'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs, for if you should, oh, what would come of it!

Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile? I have overshot myself to tell you of it. I fear the honorable men whose daggers have stabbed Friedman, I do fear it!

You will compel me, then to read the will?

Then make a ring about the corpse of Friedman, and let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? And will you give me leave?

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this coat --- I remember the first time Friedman put it on. 'Twas on a summer's evening, at his desk, that day he overcame the Weinsteins.

Look --- in this place ran Hitfix's dagger through! See what a rent the envious HF made! Through this the well-beloved McWeeny stabbed, and as he plucked his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of Friedman followed it, as rushing out of doors, to be resolved if McWeeny so unkindly knocked or no.

For McWeeny, as you know, was Friedman's angel --- judge, oh you gods, how dearly Friedman loved him. This was the most unkindest cut of all! For when the noble Friedman saw his stab, ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms, quite vanquished him, then burst his mighty heart, and in his mantle muffling up his face, even at the base of Balboa's statue, which all the while ran blood, great Friedman fell.

Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I and you and all of us fell down, while bloody treason flourished over us.

Oh now you weep and I perceive you feel the dint of pity --- these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold our Friedman's vesture wounded? Look you here! Here is himself marred as you see with traitors.

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up to such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honorable. What private griefs they have, alas, I know not what made them do it. They are wise and honorable and will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts. I am no orator, as McWeeny is; but, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, that appreciates a critic and that they know full well that gave me public leave to speak of him --- for I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood.

I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know; show you sweet Friedman's wounds, poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me …

but were I McWeeny, and McWeeny, Knowles, there were an Knowles would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue in every wound of Friedman that should move the stones of Hollywood to rise and mutiny.

But friends, you go to do you know not what! Wherein has Friedman thus deserved your love? Alas, you know not --- I must tell you then --- You have forgot the will I told you of.

Here is the will, and under Friedman's seal. To every several man, seventy-five dramadies!

Moreover, he has left you all his blogs, his private messages and new-planted forums --- he has left them all to you.

And to your heirs forever, common pleasures, to walk abroad, to recreate yourselves.

Here was a Friedman! When comes another?

I'm dismayed moreso over the fact that clearly the central people who called for Roger Friedman's dismissal from his job are NOT squeaky clean and have been caught many a time since the dawn of AICN on the internet promoting theft of behind-the-scenes news of major Hollywood films or flat out doing exactly what Roger has done. What Fox AND the rest of Hollywood should be doing right now is shutting down associating with sites like AICN and realizing the best way to go about recuperating all their hard-spent cash is to stop oversaturating the market with half-baked ideas the general scum who believe THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE is like TEH PWN! and put the control of a film back into studio hands again. To quote a wiseman:

In my mind and in my car,
We can't rewind we've gone too far,
Pictures came and broke your heart,
Put the blame on VCR

So, studios....plug up those holes by DOWNGRADING back to actual film. Make people work at offices rather than at home. Follow WB's footsteps and make your libraries available for all who are willing to pay a flat fee for a transfer of their favorite film to disc so you don't have to worry about manufacturing 2 million copies of KIDS for the 3 people who actually want to own it. Honestly, I love technology bringing me awesome things into my life but if Hollywood could see now that they have the gaming industry to compete with (long, complicated gaming hours) then they are going to have to go back to basics. Stop overpaying people who don't deserve it and cut the crap. In the end you're creating a desperate situation where everyone wants a slice of that heavenly pie. Work employees of today are filled with many who want just 15 seconds of fame...look at many of the most talked about things on the net and you'll know what I mean.

I don't agree with what Roger did, though with the way things have gone since the emergence AND general acceptance of places like AICN it was inevitable.

And I can honestly say that at the end of it all, this picture finally makes sense to me:

[trashcanman]

Wow. If you did that without a copy of "Julius Caesar" in one hand (or on another tab) then you are a bonafide savant. AICN are being hypocrites about this. They ran the Memflix FF2 review they mentioned with no qualms whatsoever and defended him vigorously when he was strung up. Now all of the sudden they are so righteously backing the big studios? I only occasionally skim reviews of movies that haven't screened yet out of curiosity. I don't care to support these idjits who review incomplete versions of films. You'd have to pay me to even watch an unfinished film. I want to see it on the big screen in all it's glory, on my television with a great picture, or not at all. I've been tempted to watch films that aren't getting released to the West promptly online, but I always hold back until I can at least get a decent import. These people who download and watch these films and then review them even if the cut is incomplete are not film fans, they are just attention hounds. I've no need for opinions from such people.

Oh, and that first link now takes us to a piece about a soap opera being canceled. Imagine my confusion.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

I didn't mean to post to actual link to Friedman's original review, so I have corrected it with the link to McWeeny's original post CONDEMNING Friedman and calling for Fox to fire him. With McWeeny admitting to downloading SPIRITED AWAY before he officially owned a copy, then shouldn't HITFIX follow suit? There's an interesting article that pinpoints that Knowles himself was part of a screener piracy scam but escaped because the guy they nailed for it wouldn't give him up as the person who orchestrated the scam in the first place.

As I said in my original post, I love technology bringing me awesome things into my life but if Hollywood could see now that they have the gaming industry to compete with (long, complicated gaming hours) then they are going to have to go back to basics. People are POURING HUGE HOURS of their precious free time into Rock Band, Guitar Hero, WoW, and the like. Who's got time for movies that run over 90 minutes these days? NO ONE...unless it's a DAMN good movie. And they are so busy loading these films up with effects and superstars that cost no less than 5 million per 3 minutes of screentime that it is no wonder movie budgets are astronomical these days and can't even begin to recoup the monies spent until the DVDs release.

Smart thing for them to do for now is the workprints that circulate in the office needs to have a huge "invisible" logo of the studio in the center and then some kind of wording or number sequence to let them know which department is responsible for having it. SAME FOR THE ACADEMY SCREENERS they send out. It will at least help them NAIL the person(s) responsible for the leak.

[trashcanman]

They do something similar with the film prints they send to theaters. They have little audio and visual cues that the audience won't think anything of that are different for each theater. But when the film gets out beforehand, they're screwed. Hollywood's real problem is that they don't need a big budget at all if they hire actual talent instead of throwing money at half-assed scripts, breaking the bank hiring the celebrity of the month and then doubling their pay for each sequel, and then adding millions in special effects when all they need to do is tell a decent fucking story. Look at Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson's early work, George Romero, Japanese directors like Takashi Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura, and any number of classic horror films. A big budget is normally an indicator of a poor script to begin with. Picture a Michael Bay film with no special effects. Exactly. They need to throw the money at talented directors and writers instead of vapid celebs and excessive CG. That will solve their budget problem in one fell swoop leaving more room for creativity, experimentation, and of course the occasional effects-laden blockbuster.

[The Curmudgeon]

Jesus Wolfy, I think you've made the hardest to follow thread in the history of this website. You hurt my head, man.

Anyway, in my opinion the guy should be fired. You're in a business that gets shafted for billions of dollars due to piracy and you're on there promoting it? FUCK YOU. It's this retarded fucking attitude that means every second person I talked to downloads movies or buys pirate copies, and looks upon me as some self-righteous stiff because I refuse to do that.

If you worked in a supermarket and stole food - you'd get sacked. If you worked in a bar and stole drink - you'd get sacked. If you worked in a bank and stole money - you'd get sacked. This is no different.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

The Curmugeon, I can go slow ahead. You see, the main point of my original post isn't so much what Friedman did, as it's CLEARLY WRONG what he's done. No, the point is that Harry Knowles and Drew McWeeny from AICN (although Drew's moved onto HitFix now) were beating the "FIRE HIM" drum loud and hard for illegally downloading the workprint when they THEMSELVES have committed a few acts of piracy themselves....Drew himself has admitted freely he downloaded SPIRITED AWAY and some show that I forget the name of on the message boards at AICN. Here's what he says when confronted about it on the Talkbacks:

CCon... by TheRealMoriarty Apr 4th, 2009 02:41:28 AM

... I've more than copped to that. I am not spotless. I had Kazaa on my computer in the early days of its existence. I did indeed download "Spirited Away." None of that has anything to do with Fox's response to Roger Friedman's article. At all. And it's not a "gotcha" if I've written about doing those things in an article here on AICN.

Knowles' admitted to seeing Episode II "illegally" via a ILM employee (heavily implied, of course) but that's debatable on the grounds that since it was from ILM most likely there was a decision by George himself to allow it since ATTACK OF THE CLONES as a title itself doesn't scream "quality" and there were MAJOR concerns when Episode I didn't deliver like George's ego expected. HOWEVER, Knowles has been involved in other...uh..."activities" that would suggest that he is certainly MORE guilty of many things dealing with similar issues of piracy. Here, take a GOOD read:

www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=159

There's more he's probably done, but because studio can buy him off like a 50 hay penny hooker they treat him like the whore he is.

[trashcanman]

Well, that was about brutal. Now why is it these folks always begin by saying things like "this is neither a hit piece nor a personal attack" and then spend that amount of time proving that statement to be untrue? Thankfully, most of the rest of the article was pretty dead on. But I just don't care. There is no such thing as successful ethical journalism. If you want to get ahead, you suck cock and you cheat. Any other way and you're just another kid shouting from the back row at a rock concert hoping to be noticed.

This is why I wouldn't want to join a professional review site. I was actually courted by a site once, but they wound up not answering my emails after several weeks of kissing my ass and asking me to waste my time creating content that they never used. Never again. Just doing what I do on Amazon, I get emails every week from some author begging me to accept a free copy of their book so I can review their shit. They don't get that I do what I want when I want and don't have time for that crap. And the very last thing I need is the kind of drama that places like AICN and Film Threat draw. The Talkbacks alone...sheesh. If Lunch ever breaks big, I'm screwed. I wish the film Threat guys weren't the only ones who don't take review written by fictional characters seriously.