A Little of the Old In and Out



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In: Video Clips for Phones. -- And the music industry shall lay down with the mobile networks (The Corsair sparks up a Montecristo Edmundo). Who could have predicted this development? Look forward to short-form video programming and music videos coming to your cellphone via Viacom. The music industry continues to metamorphose into something ... exciting, a new accoustical landscape, but one completely unrecognizable compared to ten years ago. According to Sandy Brown of TheStreet:

"MTV Networks are linking up in what appears to be the first deal of its kind for mobile music content. The licensing deal covers use of Warner's music videos within original mobile programming developed across MTV Networks' programming properties.

"The deal allows MTV Networks to create and distribute Warner videos for mobile devices. Artists in the Warner stable include Green Day, Sean Paul and Mana.

"At this point, MTV, along with its various channels such as VH1, is the only company to which Warner Music has licensed its roster for wireless use.

"'Today's digital age has created a new world in the music industry, one that requires innovative thinking about the way business has to be done to meet the evolving needs and demands of our audiences,' said Judy McGrath, CEO of MTV Networks."

Did you know -- we didn't -- that the music industry derives half of its digital revenues from ringtones?



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Out: Barak Obama: "Sunday Poison"? Is Illinois Senator Barak Obama "Sunday Poison"? Or is this simply another instance of the Nielsen's fuzzy math. We'll report, you decide. According to USNews&World Report (link via Wonkette):

"Is Washington already bored with new Senate star Barack Obama? In his two Sunday talk show appearances this month, the programs finished dead last in the all important Washington market. 'He's Sunday poison,' says a TV exec."

WTF?!



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In: A Scanner Darkly. The buzz is growing; though, admittedly, most of said buzz is among the aint-it-cool set (Averted Gaze). The film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" is hugely anticipated, if only for the intriguing cast.

How can you not go see a Richard Linklater movie with rotomation, Keanu Reeves (Who, quite frankly, was devastatingly good in Thumbsucker), Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr (Can you imagine the company that insured these "legally-challenged" actor-freaks for this film)? This, from Moviehole:

"Moviehole: How did the Scanner Darkly shoot go?

"Woody Harrelson: It was very interesting. I read that book and I honestly had no idea what the hell was going on. Then I did the movie because I just wanted to do it. I wanted to work with Richard Linklater, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder. I wanted to do it, but I really still don�t know what the hell that film is about. But I just know it�s really interesting.

"Moviehole: How did you shoot the film?

"Woody Harrelsen: We shot it hi-def. And so Rick [Linklater] is doing it just like Waking Life, and animating over the film. But it was cool shooting it, because he�d have like six camera lined up everywhere. It was cool because I hadn�t really shot that much hi-def and because there was a little bit of spontaneity. And of course Downey will go off. He really is a genius. One time we did this scene where the four of us are all around in the living room, talking about this bike, and Downey just went off on this great tirade. And then Rick cut, and me and Winona just looked at each other and she says, 'I am so glad we got to see that.' And I said, 'Me too. That was amazing.'
"Moviehole:Have you gotten to see any of the completed footage yet?

"Woody Harrelsen: I haven�t. They sent the clips, but it was all still just us. It wasn�t animated yet. Although I think they�ve got a lot of it animated by now."

We're so there.



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Out: Andrea Mitchell. Jonathan Yardley's crisp, velvet-gloved bitchslapping of Andrea Mitchell was the shot heard round the world (The Corsair ruefully rubs his cheek), reverberating sharply throughout the corridors of power, and was the talk of all the boozy lunches of The Chattering Classes. Yardley wrote:

"She's come a long way from the Bronx and New Rochelle, and though she says that 'I still love the chase for news,' she does her chasing in an environment to which most journalists are denied admission.

"Say it for her, though, that what she does, she does very well. She's smart, energetic, determined and fast on her feet: a real terrier.

" ... She's considerably less right in her apparent conviction that a blow-by-blow account of three decades on the front line of television journalism is, in and of itself, an interesting story. It isn't."

Vaughn Ververs of CBS' Eye Blog asks the related question: "Does being a reporter mean one shouldn�t have dinner with anyone they might cover in a purely social setting? How about cocktail parties?"

Good question. Mitchell can answer it, hopefully, at her Methuselan husband's swishy farewell party.



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In: From RNC Chair to Statewide Elected Official. If our favorite Dickensian villain Robert Novak's inside sources pan out once again, as they all-too-often do, a new Republican Party trend seems to be emerging: Get a former RNC Chair, Polish him off, and run him for statewide office, preferably in the South. Think: Former RNC Chair, current buzzworthy Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. In one of his latest column, Novak writes:

"Influential Virginia Republicans are eyeing former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie as a possible successor to Sen. John Warner if the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman does not seek re-election in 2008 at age 81.

"Gillespie, a former House GOP staffer, headed the Republican National Committee during the 2004 campaign and was a major national spokesman for the party. He currently is on leave from his own lobbying firm and working at the White House to shepherd Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to confirmation as chief justice.

"Gillespie told this column he has not been approached for the Senate seat. Nevertheless, the New Jersey native is talked about as the best bet to succeed Warner."

Positively pimpy.



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Out: Mike Eisner. When not penning virtually unreadable, saccharine and pseudo-inspirational blather as "Camp, (such a brazen attempt at good PR it is laughable)" the thuggish Disney CEO Michael Eisner prepares, meekly, his retreat from civilized life and moseys into the Disneyland sunset. According to The Old Gray Lady:

"When Michael D. Eisner leaves the Walt Disney Company for good on Friday, there will be no grand send-off or congratulatory party. Mr. Eisner, who served as chief executive for more than two decades, has agreed only to a one-page retrospective in the company newsletter, according to Disney executives.

"It is a low-key way to end a 21-year career that was both brilliant and controversial and during which Mr. Eisner, 63, became the face of Disney for the generation whose parents grew up with the founder, Walt Disney.

" ... Mr. Eisner has little to say about his leaving. Through a spokeswoman, he declined last week to discuss his career. Instead he is expected to send an e-mail message to Disney's employees before he vacates his office."

A Mouse Kingdom for a copy of that email (The Corsair salivates) ! How long after it is issued will it leak, and then how long before clever, hastily put-together little Pixar "ding-dong-the-Eisner's-dead" animations begin virally swarming the web?



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In: Enrique Iglesias' Travelling Companion. According to Papermag.com's resident Blogger, our pal, the most xcellent Mr. Mickey, currently causing hooplah in London, "My people at the Carlton Tower tell me that Enrique Iglesias stayed there and requested a special down mattress for his traveling companion who was NOT Anna Kournikova."

Oh no he didn't!