This Sunday during the day, after all the Independence Day festivities subsided, I cleaned my place. And I mean cleaned. Cleaning for me is one of those tasks that rapidly becomes scope creep piled on top of scope creep. I start with a simple list -- full bathroom, kitchen counters, laundry, picking up things. At the start, I write a few more items down, "Oh yeah, might as well organize my DVDs as long as I'm putting them away." By the end, I can't even get myself to look at my original list, it would be an admission of how far I have strayed. But at least my place was pretty spiffy by the end, complete with vacuumed rugs, swept floors, and a tub that looks like it's never been used.

So I guess it was in the spirit of housecleaning that I decided that, on Monday night, instead of making a new vid, I'd take care of some old business.

In early April, I was on my YouTube My Videos page and saw a notice in the "Into the Mantle 7 Month Anniversary" summary. After clicking on the details, I was shocked that my video may have audio content that is "is owned or licensed by <company>. As a result, your video has been muted.". This was a first for us at ITM, though Darius has been hit by it since (and by the same music conglomerate) in the Wizard World Part 5 video, which we both think is really crappy since we were both pretty happy with how the final vid wrapped up the series.

Well three months after I first saw that (honestly, to the day, oddly enough), I sat down to get that audio back on there. Yes, that's a hefty dose of procrastination, though I'm sure my place would be pleased as punch if I cleaned it on a three month basis. :)

As you can see in the video, there's an opening song and a closing song. I thought that the video was red-flagged simply because I cited the songs in the youtube description, a formality I did for their benefit and, while a nice gesture, is certainly not required on YouTube. For the new version, I have removed such citations. Net effect: Less awareness of the original artist. If I had uploaded it without citations in the first place, this most likely would have never come up. The view count was pretty slender (<50), the vid obviously hadn't gone viral. But since they've red-flagged it, it would probably be on their radar if I uploaded the same video again, even if I updated the title.

In the months of idleness, I had the thought in the back of my head that the song #2 was the one with which the company had it's unease. To be sure, I knew that #2's artist, the purple-clad name-shirker, plays by his own rules in the music industry, so this just must be one of them. However, when I looked through the warnings on YouTube, I could find no explicit mention of the song. But whatever, I'll record a cover of the song, upload it, leave out the citations, and that'll be it.

Epic fail. YouTube muted the new video right away. I tried again, giving it a completely different title and description just to see if their algorithm just dealt with text comparison, but no dice. (Not to mention that YouTube was down for a few hours, so I couldn't even begin this manual process until well after 1am).

Time for some research. I looked at the YouTube FAQ concerning content identifictation:

What is YouTube's new Content Identification tool?
The Content Identification tool is the latest way YouTube offers copyright holders to easily identify and manage their content on YouTube. The tool creates ID files which are then run against user uploads and, if a match occurs, the copyright holders policy preferences are then applied to that video. Rights owners can choose to block, track or monetize their content.

What are "ID files?"
The digital content identification file which corresponds to a reference file (a piece of content like a movie, music or other audiovisual material). This file is generated using Google software and is also known as a "fingerprint."

(Their FAQs are pretty poorly maintained, by the way. Just reading the top of this document, you can see that these Qs are so FA that they interrupt the answers, and then repeat themselves further down the page.)

Still a little nebulous how it actually works. So okay, maybe it was song #1 that they had gripes with. Once the doubt entered my head, I did google searches linking the company with artist #1 and artist #2. #2 has more results, but it's a pretty generic word and the #1 results look more relevant. I'll bite the bullet and record the first one, it'll take longer to make the video and upload it than it will to record the mostly a capella snippet.

Well... it worked! And it's up now. Although I was obviously put out by the whole process, I was somewhat in awe of YouTube's Content Identification logic. It's not like song #1 took up the entire video, my snippet was maybe 30 seconds long. True, I started the vid with the start of the song so that would lines up nicely, but still, I was impressed.

I was impressed, that is, until I checked out my chat logs. I wanted to double check when I first discovered that the audio had been muted (4/6, same week as my "Best Week Ever" excitement). I was chatting with Darius when I found it out and I copied and pasted the warning message to him. There it was, explicitly naming song #2 as the offending song. How is it then that the vid was still muted after I replaced song #2, and was allowed only after I replaced song #1 as well? Either a) the company owns #1 and #2 and lumped it's grievances into one or b) YouTube's Content Identification logic is a bit more trial-and-error than I gave them credit for. Either way, the fact that they used to explicitly name the offending songs but don't anymore makes me lean towards the latter. They're moving in a "the less you know, the better" direction, not risking a straightforward disclosure of what cards it has.

The fact that song #2 was the troublesome one makes sense when doing some quick YouTube searches on the artists. Which one of these has less presence than the other?

Bottom line: It's up now, and I don't think there's any chance it will be muted again. It does make me wary about YouTube. There's still the issue of Darius' video, and I wish there was a simple way to resolve that. It's possible that the reason this video got targeted is because it's seen as an ITM advertisement instead of a celebration. Ripping ourselves from YouTube at this point would be a difficult goodbye - we have metadata and established connections that would take a while to rebuild somewhere else. But if the grass is indeed greener somewhere else, and stays greener, then instead of spending our time cleaning this place, we'll just pack up and move.

(Note: We're still waiting on the 1 year anniversary vid. Mr. March to the front desk please :)

The 2009 Summer Movie Season has begun and, of course, with great fanfare. Last Year, Iron Man was the first big movie of the season, kicking off a summer rife with comic book blockbusters. This year, the movie to see was J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek. As Iron Man set the bar rather high last year, as did Star Trek this year. It will be an interesting summer. This is the first edition of Summer 2009 Movie Reviews. It is relatively spoilerific, so if you haven’t seen Star Trek, Terminator, Drag Me to Hell or UP, I would wait before partaking, particularly with the Terminator review.

Enjoy!

What is there for me to say about this movie that hasn’t been said a hundred times already? I would like to preface this review by saying that I am not a Trekker. I have never seen an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Voyager, or Enterprise. I have only seen a select few episodes of Deep Space Nine and Next Generation. My ranking of previous Star Trek movies in order of greatness is, as follows:

1. Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
2. Star Trek: The Movie
3. Generations
4. Star Trek: VI The Undiscovered Country
5. Star Trek: First Contact

The rest were meh at best. Though, I did enjoy the humor infused into Star Trek IV, a humor that Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman were smart enough to inject into this movie.

Now that my Star Trek credentials, or lack thereof, are out of the way, on with the praise. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto carried this movie. Quinto’s Spock was logical and sympathetic. Pine’s Kirk was headstrong, stubborn and charming. The rest of the cast was brilliant as well. It was unfortunate that Simon Pegg didn’t have more screen time as Scotty. I could have watched an entire movie of just him and Karl Urban’s Bones stuck on a planet together bantering. I don’t really know what to say about Uhura. I like Uhura’s strength in the original movies and I like how they set her up to be a headstrong, smart, sassy woman in this flick, but I feel like the Spock romance completely undercut that. Not that those traits don’t exist in a woman in a relationship, but the tension of her with Kirk and Spock could have been explored at least through the next movie. The boys kinda shot themselves in the foot with that one. Another casting footnote, Winona Ryder and Tyler Perry. Really, gentlemen? I found Tyler Perry distracting and apparently he acts like a piece of wood when he isn’t in drag. And Winona Ryder? I like Winona Ryder. I do. I just don’t know why they made her Spock’s Mom. It just didn’t fit for me. Especially when paired with such a powerhouse like Ben Cross as Spock’s Father. Sorry. Maybe it was just me.

Time Travel and Alternate Universes. J.J., you are a genius. What better way to quell the seeds of dissent amongst the Star Trek purists that to invoke an alternate universe. Sure, that stuff happened, but so did this stuff. And good thing too, because, like I said, I am no hard core Trekker, but even I said to myself at the beginning, “Wait, wasn’t Kirk born in Iowa?”

Beyond this, I can go into details about how the story wasn’t amazing, but I don’t need to. This movie was a character piece, did a great job establishing the world and alternate enhancements to the characters people love. It was a character piece infused with a good underlying story. For the next several movies, they can do whatever they want. And now, they have the backdrop of dealing with Vulcan being destroyed and Romulus on the far edge of possible destruction. Plenty of fodder. Can’t wait for the next one.

Solid A.

I didn’t hate this movie. I also didn’t like it. I love T1 and T2. I had extreme reservations about T3, but enjoyed it when I finally bit the bullet and watched it. When I first saw the trailer for Terminator Salvation, I couldn’t have been more excited. We finally get to see the future? The one we had always been told about? Well, now I’ve seen the future. And it is boring.

All of the other Terminator movies moved the story forward. In Terminator, we have to protect Sarah Connor so that John Connor can lead the resistance. In Terminator 2, they are trying to not only protect John Connor, but do their best to prevent Judgement Day from ever happening. In Terminator 3, they are protecting John Connor and Kate Connor, as well as lead us to see that the future is inevitable. In Terminator 4, a Terminator is sent to unwittingly infiltrate the resistance while John Connor tries to protect Kyle Reese, butting heads with leadership while finding a secret way to destroy the machines once and for all. You see how convoluted the final description was? Also, the three other movies were about John Connor. This one was not. It was barely about Kyle Reese. This one was about the Terminator. But not the Terminator we know. A different human version of the Terminator. I think Sam Worthington did an amazing job. I felt for him as the protagonist. But, the trailer ruined the reveal and by the time we got into the meat of the story, Marcus being a sleeper agent, I didn’t care. T3 ended with us caring about what happened to John and Kate Connor, but this movie didn’t really seem to care at all about what happened to them. By the way, what a waste of both the character of Kate Connor and the acting talent of Bryce Dallas Howard. They could have taken her out of this movie completely and I wouldn’t have missed her. Maybe instead of focusing on the completely random ‘romance’ between the hot fighter pilot and Marcus, focus on the characters people are already invested in.

Casting on this was a little strange. Anton Yelchin may be the next great actor to grow in the public’s eyes. Great as Chekov in Star Trek, perfect as Kyle Reese. Hard to believe he started as the son on the highly forgotten and underrated series, Huff. Bryce Dallas and Worthington were great. But, Moon Bloodgood? Yeah, she is crazy hot. But so crazy hot that it was distracting. Was she a supermodel turned fighter pilot once the machines attacked? C’mon. And, I hate to say it, invoking fanboy wrath, but Christian Bale needs to back off for a bit. Growling isn’t acting, pal. I love Bale as Batman, and think he is an amazing actor, but with this one, I think he may be immersed in the badass persona a little too much. I think Bale needs to go out and do a zany romantic comedy, in his own accent, then come back to doing some drama and Batman 3. Take a badass break for a bit. Obviously, it’s stressing you out. Gerard Butler did it. He’s doing fine.

In the end, we get no new info, nothing changes. They blow up one Skynet hub in a cheesy helicopter escaping the mushroom cloud moment. But the war goes on. Zzzzzz.

Oh, and one more thing. Where was the story editor on this one? Glaring line:

Computer: You have done what we have always failed to do....Finally Kill John Connor.

Finally Kill John Connor? Like they know in the future they are going to send machines back in time to try to kill him. Or has his life been broadcast to all the machines? THAT HASN’T HAPPENED YET! The meat suit Terminators have just been built. Which means, no time travel yet, no attempts on John’s life yet, and no one knowing who he is yet. He isn’t even the leader of the resistance in this movie. Why would he pose a threat to them? Seriously, guys.

Sorry, boys. The ‘spolsions weren’t enough for me on this one. C+.

Seeing the trailer, this isn’t the sort of movie I would usually go to. I’m just not a horror buff. However, it is Sam Raimi. In a supposed return to Evil Dead/Evil Dead 2/Army of Darkness form, nothing about the trailer for this movie indicated that tone. But, the reviewers raved. Saying it was scary and hilarious and fun. All the stuff that I love about early Raimi. “This movie sounds like the bees knees!” I said to myself. All of that hullabaloo came from trusted reviewers like Peter Travers, J.R. Jones, Michael Phillips, Variety, The Village Voice, Newsday, friggin’ 93% FRESH on Rotten Tomatoes. What the hell movie did you jackholes see that I didn’t? You can even use the argument that maybe I didn’t think I got what I paid for. BZZZZ! Wrong. I saw it for free! So I was even more forgiving of the looser points of this movie!

Perhaps the biggest problem with this movie is that the lead, Alison Lohman, wasn’t aware she was in a comedy. Sure, we got ridiculous camera work, a creepy old lady spewing goo and people getting walloped by demons, but in between these moments of ridiculous comedy/violence, a really bad horror movie was desperately trying to take place. So, instead of those hilarious moments enhancing the movie, as there were much fewer of them in this flick than in the Evil Dead trilogy, they brought the movie down, because the rest of the time I thought there was a serious movie going on. Not because I’m a gullible dipsh*t, but because that’s what the actors were conveying. If this was meant to be a delightfully campy thrill ride, which I assume it was, the moments of high comedy were too few and far between to drive the plot. Maybe it’s just that I’m used to the scenery chewing that happens when Bruce Campbell is taking me along for the ride, but if the ‘real world’ is what infects the fun when The Greatest Chin Alive isn’t there to serve up the cheese on a silver platter, I don’t want any.

Boo. C-. It barely escaped a D because when it was funny, it was funny.

Just to prove that I am not a naysayer when it comes to all things movie, I will now heap enormous praise on Disney/Pixar’s UP. Is it possible that everything Pixar touches is magic? I don’t know how they do it, but from rats to toys to cars, these animators create characters who the audience can empathize with and relate to. I feel that their pitch meetings go something like this:

Writer: What about a movie about an old man with a floating house?

Producer: Do it.

And in that scenario, the writer could say anything.

Writer: What about a movie about the microscopic adventures of VD?

Producer: Do it. And get Chris Rock to be the voice of Chlamydia.

I would go see that movie if Pixar did it. The protagonist is a 70 year old man? That isn’t going to sell toys! Who cares? Within the first 15 minutes of this movie I was both laughing hysterically and almost bawling my eyes out. Mr. Fredrickson is a character we all know and love, the old man who on the surface seems angry and bitter, but underneath it all has experienced great love and loss. Russell, the overambitious wilderness scout without a father figure, displays the innocence and humor that everyone who has ever had a conversation with a 10 year old will recognize. Even Doug, the dog with an artificial voice box, talks like we think a dog would talk. I couldn’t help but laugh every time “Squirrel!” brought him to attention. This movie is funny, sad, inspirational. It’s about taking your life into your own hands, grieving, letting go, finding friendship, hilarious talking dogs and a bird named Kevin.

A++ Pixar. Well Done.

Next Month: Angels and Demons, The Hangover, Land of the Lost, Year One, Taking of Pelham 123, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Hal Gardner, Signing Off.