What If 'Aliens' Became a Sitcom? (Video)

12:22 PM PDT 10/10/2013 by Graeme McMillan

From the original Ridley Scott horror movie through the more action-genre hijinks of James Cameron's Aliens, quasi-arthouse leanings of Alien 3 and whatever-that-was Prometheus -- not to mention Alien: Resurrection and the Aliens Vs. Predator movies -- 20th Century Fox's Alien franchise has been through a lot of changes in its long history. However, it has never been a straight-up comedy -- until now.

Created by Dorks of Yore -- a YouTube channel featuring the work of Mad TV's Pat Kilbane and The New in Living Color's Melissa McQueen -- Aliens: The Sitcom suggests that Cameron's Aliens had been such a success in 1986 that it was spun off into primetime sitcom Hosts, with (as you'd expect) "hilarious consequences."

STORY: 'Aliens vs. Predator' Once More for Dark Horse Comics

Somewhere, someone at Fox is trying to work out if there's a way to make this work on a weekly basis (Spoiler: No). Still, at least now we have a great model for the final episode of Dads. Watch the video below:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/THRComicCon/~3/Asy-7Xbhk1Q/story01.htm
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The New And The Next: Six-Second Comedy And A Spin On News

[unable to retrieve full-text content]This week, Ozy co-founder Carlos Watson tells NPR's Arun Rath about the latest trend in Uruguay's YouTube scene and one young woman who gained a following with her love of science.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/aSogVhSaDkI/the-new-and-the-next-six-second-comedy-and-a-spin-on-news
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U.K. Piracy Fight Aims at Educating a Younger Demographic

LONDON – The fight against piracy in the U.K. has become more about persuasion and less about punishment than about trying to change behavior. And it's having to target an ever younger demographic.

That's the message from the Industry Trust, the U.K. film and TV industry body backed by everyone from the U.S. studios to retailers and TV banners, set up to look after copyright issues and fight piracy.

At a Piracy and Distribution workshop hosted by the Industry Trust during this year's BFI London Film Festival, a high profile panel of industry reps and commentators discussed the role web search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing play in pushing consumers towards pirated material, the need to educate a generation of movie and TV consumers and the hope that changing habits will reduce piracy.

According to figures presented by the Trust, 40 percent of those infringing copyright are not even aware the sites they are being led too via search engines are illegal.

Kicking off the discussion and debate, Industry Trust for IP Awareness director general Liz Bales said that over the last few years the industry body has seen a "big spike" in pirated consumption among the 11 to 12-year-old demographic.

Bales said the days of trying to scare people off from illegal downloads or buying pirated goods is less relevant as a generation grows up in a digital online age.

"What we are trying to do now is to inspire people to consume it [content] through legal providers. It's all about directing them where to go and create that kind of behavior."

Bales noted that in her eight years of overseeing the Industry Trust fight, piracy was a matter of "habitual behavior" and that concentrating on changing consumer habit via gentle persuasion rather than scare tactics was almost certainly more appropriate, especially among younger demographics.

She also noted that while often genre-led, titles such as Oscar winning The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow had been one of the most heavily pirated releases in 2009 because it had not been as widely distributed as the public's appetite wanted.

The panel also discussed the role of the web search engine powerhouses with Google at the heart of the debate.

"We hope the changes they made to the algorithm will begin to take effect and make an impact," Bales said.

There was also frustration in the room that the much-vaunted Digital Economy Act, a piece of British legislation that is currently languishing in the Treasury government department and has several legal sanctions and measure to combat copyright infringement in the digital age, remains shelved as the coalition government shows no appetite to enact it and make it part of the British legal landscape.

But the softly softly approach to educating children was highlighted with the debut of a short film made for the upcoming National Youth Film Festival for schools and youth groups to point them in the right direction.

It shows two Muppet-like characters talking as the older one watches Fast and Furious 6 on a laptop "that he's streaming".

The smaller, younger puppet suggests that it might be an idea to pay for the film because without the money, there would be no "awesome" special effects and bits of flying debris.

He also suggests that the "seven quid" ($11) the older puppet thinks would make no difference might pay for at least one of Vin Diesel's socks.

The humorous exchange aims to highlight that if people stop paying for content, then the content will no longer be made.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/business/~3/Vv-g6UotLuo/story01.htm
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CBGB: A Toothless CliffsNotes for the Club Where Punk Was Born

Malin Akerman as Debbie Harry and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop. Photo Credit: XLrator Media

When I told a New Yorker friend who grew up going to punk shows in Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s that the new CBGB movie — the eponymous CBGB, out this Friday — was awful, her response was simple.

“Honestly, what did you expect?”

CBGB, the grimy Lower East Side bar that launched the careers of some of the most influential punk rockers of all time, was a crucial thread of the cultural tapestry of 1970s and ’80s New York City. After years of documentaries and tributes to the now-shuttered landmark’s legacy, there’s little question that a scripted film about its lovable yet notoriously impractical owner Hilly Kristal was bound (and even deserved!) to be made. Unfortunately for all, it was this one.

Within the punk scene it birthed, the dysfunctional squabbling of Kristal’s family — both before and after his death in 2007 — is almost as legendary as the club’s monumentally gross bathroom. Their bitter feud about the CBGB brand (and its money) became part and parcel of its legacy, even as the venue itself wasted away, transplanting in 2006 and shuttering for good in 2008. Given that the Hollywood-polished movie made with the blessing of one half of the Kristal family and the condemnation of the other, it’s unsurprising that CBGB glosses over many of those messy realities and becomes a rose-colored caricature masquerading as true story.

Co-produced by Kristal’s daughter Lisa Kristal Burgman, the film chronicles the life of CBGB proprietor, played ably enough by a doleful Alan Rickman (or an Americanized Severus Snape – it’s often hard to tell). After failing to procure a business loan from a bank in 1969, Kristal instead borrows money from his mother Bertha (Estelle Harris) to open a bar in the barren wasteland of the East Village of the ’70s, with the help of hardhatted right-hand man Merv Ferguson (Donal Logue). Using comic-style animations and goofy sound effects, the movie traces the club’s history from its bleak biker-bar beginnings to the provenance of the punk-rock revolution.

A massive carousel of cast members wheel in and out of a film that is, in essence, a Hilly Kristal character study. There’s Idaho (Freddie Rodriguez), the violinist-turned-gadfly-junkie who represents the many drug addicts Kristal employed in his kitchen; Stan (Michael Massee), the overworked downtown cop who hovers around the bar and lets Kristal off the hook for noise complaints and other minor infractions; and Taxi, the homeless tech hired to work the CBGB sound board.

There’s Lisa Kristal herself, played by Ashley Greene in (obviously) the most positive light, as the boldly able college dropout who materializes when her father fails to help with tuition and martyrs herself by attempting to turn around his business’s finances. John Holmstrom (Josh Zuckerman) and Mary Herron (Ahna O’Reilly) — respectively the co-founder and writer of Punk, the first-ever punk magazine – act as heavy-handed narrators, waxing embarrassingly philosophical about the significance of the musical underground while charging down dank downtown alleys to the tune of Richard Hell and the Voidoids with a vigor that would make Aaron Sorkin proud.

And of course, there are the soon-to-be superstars that made CBGB legendary (or was it vice versa?). Talking Heads. Blondie. Iggy Pop. Lou Reed. The Dead Boys. The Ramones. Patti Smith. A cavalcade of stars flash across the screen like expensive end-credits peppered with endearing bloopers, each appearance more kooky and recognizable than the last. (And just in case you aren’t sure, each and every one is introduced with a wholly unsubtle animated nametag.) Even the Police make an appearance in the hastily-wrapped ending. The breakneck speed at which we meet each musician, hear three fan-service lines, and then lose them in the melee of the white noise of the crowd makes for a dizzying, almost parodic celebrity laundry list.

It’s the real history of the place, yes, but bundled into a jerky, consumer-friendly package that does everyone a disservice. To their credit, or perhaps their immense access, the filmmakers invited artists like the Dead Boys’ Cheetah Chrome to make on-screen appearances and used actual pieces of the club – the cash register, the entire bathroom, all dutifully preserved like museum artifacts they are – in the movie. But authentic props and cameos can’t stand in for a weak script, or compensate for the wholesale absence of important players in the club’s history.

Kristal’s ex-wife Karen, who technically owned CBGB and its liquor license for years and worked the door and bar, is pointedly absent from the film. (She refused to authorize her likeness after receiving none of her ex-husband’s $3.7 million fortune.) Instead, Merv takes over her role as well. Karen’s son — and Lisa’s brother — Dana is nowhere to be found for similar reasons; he’s been incredibly vocal about his objections since the film was announced.) These are typical Hollywood snags, of course, but their exclusion further narrows the perspective and reach of a film that is already hamstrung by selective memory. 

The most disappointing part of this movie, however, isn’t just its sanguine script, its clown characters or its sycophantic epilogue (everyone lives happily ever after, hooray!). It’s the fact that, after all these years of watching the Kristal family bicker over rights and estates and properties, yanking CBGB in and out of existence for four decades, this is the film the public gets about such an undeniable creative hotbed in American history.

Rather than offering us emotional depth or connection to a deeply significant, clearly heartfelt moment in music history, CBGB gives us little more than a punk CliffsNotes at a time when even Anna Wintour has already done the reading. In lieu of an honest look at the circumstances that helped give birth to punk and the complicated man who helped make it possible, we get an time-softened, nostalgia-heavy encomium about a beloved saint (who bailed junkies out of jail and gave them jobs!) designed to extract the profit that the club’s owners were unable to make — or perhaps manage — when it was open.

As Ferguson points out, shrugging, in a moment of clarity that comes close to breaking the fourth wall: “Hey, art sucks.”

These 101 minutes of palatably zany rock and roll seem custom-built to solidify the CBGB brand – which exists today only as a redundant festival and a sea of horrible T-shirts – and attempt to regain control of a moment in time that was special and far more vital precisely because it was out of control. While you’d never know it from watching the film, the club went under in 2006 because the family was once again unable to make rent. Like much of what makes the story interesting, that fact gets swept under the rug in CBGB, even though it’s the most beautifully, tragically New York epilogue of all.

Source: http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661469/s/323c819c/sc/38/l/0L0Swired0N0Cunderwire0C20A130C10A0Ccbgb0Emovie0Ereview0C/story01.htm
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Baidu Appoints Founder Of NetDragon, One Of China's Top Online ...

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, announced today that it has appointed Liu Dejian, the founder, chairman and executive director of NetDragon, an online gaming and mobile developer, to its Board of Directors. Liu also served as chairman and non-executive director of 91 Wireless, one of China’s largest app marketplaces and a former NetDragon subsidiary, before Baidu agreed to acquire it for $1.9 billion in August 2013.

Liu’s appointment signifies Baidu’s ongoing focus on its mobile strategy. The company was relatively late to monetize its mobile businesses, especially when compared to rivals like Tencent, Qihoo and Alibaba Group, but has been aggressively building its mobile assets over the past year with several acquisitions, including 91 Wireless and streaming video platform PPS.

Founded in 1999, NetDragon is now one of China’s largest online gaming and mobile platform development companies. Liu oversees NetDragon’s overall strategic development and is the chief designer on its game development team. After NetDragon bought 91 Wireless in 2008, it quickly grew into one of the top third-party smartphone app distribution platforms in China, where Google Play isn’t available.

In a statement, Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li said Liu’s “innovative leadership style and pedigree as an Internet entrepreneur will be of great value to Baidu. We are confident that he will make a significant contribution to our efforts to consolidate our leading position in China.”

October 11, 1999

May 8, 2005, NASDAQ:BIDU

Baidu is the largest Chinese language search engines. Baidu’s mission is to provide the best way for people to find information online, including Chinese language web pages, news, images and multimedia files though links provided on their website. In addition to serving individual Internet search users, Baidu also provides a platform for businesses to reach potential customers online. The company’s online marketing services include auction-based P4P and tailored solutions.

via: Baidu

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Sick and tired of bicyclists ignoring traffic law - Straight Dope ...

Quote:

I have seen none of the above. I believe it is because the bicyclists are aware that the road is a flatter surface, (in other words, easier for them to ride their bikes), yet harder on the drivers, and more dangerous for everyone involved.

It's a rare 'bikepath' that's actually reserved for bicycles, rather than shared with every sort of nonmotorized traffic that cares to use it - pedestrians, joggers, pedestrians in groups, pedestrians walking dogs, kids on scooters and skateboards, and so forth.

In the DC area, all of the major bikepaths - C&O, Rock Creek, GW Parkway, W&OD, etc. - are widely used by pretty much all of the above. On weekends (and evenings during the Daylight Savings half of the year), a cyclist can pretty much forget about the prospect of building up any momentum on any of those trails.

Similarly, I've run into many secondary trails over time that were undoubtedly smooth right after they were initially paved, but have taken on the lumpiness of an unmade bed while preserving the solidness of asphalt, as tree roots, temperature changes, and low maintenance budgets have taken their toll.

In either case, it is only natural for cyclists to prefer the road. Not to mention, we do in fact have a legal right to ride on pretty much all roads that aren't limited access, and a few that are.

Sure, there's an added risk. But for the most part, we've got to bike on roads anyway, because outside of some exceptional locales like Portland, OR or Davis, CA, the bikepaths just don't go everywhere. In my part of Maryland, if I want to bike, I've got to bike on roads, period. (There's one little bikepath a few miles away from my home, but it's short and doesn't go anywhere I'm going.) So when I'm cycling in places where there's a bikepath, I'll use the bikepath if I regard it as an improvement on cycling on the roads, but I don't feel any obligation either to the temporary and marginal improvement to my own safety, or to the convenience of motorists, to use the bikepath rather than the road.

Source: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=696425

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Scientology Under Attack: Leah Remini Left Church Because She Was ?Fed Up? With How Badly People Were Treated

Leah Remini left Scientology because she was fed up with how badly the church treated people, RadarOnline.com is reporting exclusively.

The King of Queens star?s decision was prompted not only by things she had to endure but also by the way the church was being run, and in particular how the leaders treated certain members. Her decision has promoted a renewed focus on the church, its controversial policies and caused ex members to return to the spotlight with harsh criticism.

?Leah is like a lot of other people who left in that she got fed up with the church?s policies, and the way the leadership was acting,? a source told Radar.

?Many people who have left recently have lost faith in the people running the church. And that?s what happened here too.?

PHOTOS: Hollywood Stars Who Are Scientologists

As Radar reported earlier, Remini confirmed her decision to leave Scientology after days of public speculation. Several reports say she incurred the wrath of the church?s leaders when she questioned why David Miscavige?s wife was almost never seen in public ? and wasn?t at Tom Cruise?s 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes.

She was allegedly told to shut up by a church bigwig. That caused her to write a report, per church rules, about events that she saw as wrong.

For years she was treated with suspicion by high ranking members of the church, according to sources. And while they were suspicious of her, she grew fed up with them and how the church was being run.

?She thought about this over a long time,? one source told Us Weeky.

PHOTOS:? Scientology Celebrity Centre Celebrates Anniversary With Famous Members

And the New York Post reported that Remini left because she didn?t approve of Miscavige and his tactics in running the church.

It?s a headline-making defection and significant blow to the church, which counts John Travolta and Tom Cruise and many other celebrities among its high-profile members. Now Remini?s departure has put the church in the line of fire for many critics and those who have left over the years, with horror stories.

Journalist Tony Ortega, who broke the story of Remini leaving Scientology, posted an open letter to Cruise, demanding to know why HE didn?t question the odd disappearance of Miscavige?s wife Shelly.

Ortega wrote:

?You remember the stink that Leah raised at your wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006. Leah was surprised to see that your best man, Scientology leader David Miscavige, was there without his wife Shelly. And when she asked about it, Tommy Davis told her, ?You don?t have the f*cking rank to ask about Shelly.?

Well, if you know Leah ? and we know you do, Tom ? you could have predicted that she wasn?t going to take that lying down.

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Tom Cruise?s Tricked Out SUV Made By Scientology Church Members

Meanwhile, Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of Scientology leader David Miscavige, also said she heard Remini was fed up with the way she was treated.

?From what I understand, she was just fed up with the way she was being treated when she was following church policy,??she told People.com.

?She is a tough woman and isn?t the type to yield or turn a blind eye to a blatant injustice. People like that don?t last too long in Scientology because they aren?t easy to control.?

UPDATE: 3:15 PM: A rep from the Church of Scientology told us, ?The Church respects the privacy of parishioners and has no further comment.?? The Church went on to say ?on a broader level, please note the following, which is not to be construed as a comment about Ms. Remini. We have read numerous allegations about the Church in the coverage of this story that are categorically false, alleging so-called policies and practices. The allegations of ?interrogations? and ?thought modification? are absurd and pure nonsense, as are all the statements made about the Church?s leader, Mr. David Miscavige.? Under the 25-year leadership of Mr. Miscavige, following in the footsteps of our Founder, L. Ron Hubbard, the Church is enjoying tremendous expansion as shown in our new churches opening in six continents and the many new parishioners joining their congregations.?

Source: http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/07/leah-remini-left-scientology-fed-up-people-treated-badly/

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