Assemblog: November 9, 2012

Sinister, 2012

New this week on Popshifter: I give a wrap up of Toronto After Dark; Chelsea reviews The Red Machine, reminisces about ’90s Boston band Tribe, and raves about Sophie Auster’s debut EP The Red Weather; Danny wonders if Creedence Clearwater Revival’s new Ultimate box set will prove they’re the American Beatles; and Julie praises Firewater’s International Orange! as well as their recent concert in Cleveland.

Some fantastic news: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (À l’intérieur) have announced the details of their long-awaited third picture (never mind that Livide has still not received any sort of theatrical or home video release outside of Europe). It’s called Among The Living, and Bloody Disgusting has a synopsis:

Among The Living tells the story of 3 young boys who stumble upon an abandoned amusement park where they catch sight of a woman being dragged around in chains by a freaky looking clown. Worse still, the clown sees them and that night each boy is visited by an unwelcome intruder in their home.

Among The Living, like the duo’s other films, will also feature Beatrice Dalle.

In other upcoming film news, apparently Andy Serkis will direct a “performance capture version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. /Film adds a brief discussion of Serkis’s unique career path, which is worth a read. Animal Farm is an incredible and incredibly disturbing book and I’m definitely looking forward to how this project will turn out.

If you haven’t seen Sinister yet, you might want to skip this somewhat spoilery piece from Fear.net. Gregory Burkhart has posted a short interview with director Scott Derrickson which describes the relationship between the original score, the soundtrack, and the sound design of Sinister. I cannot think of another recent movie—much less a horror film—whose music and sound cues have been so remarkably arranged or so viscerally terrifying.

The article also includes a list of the music used in the film along with some YouTube links by the bands: Ulver, Aghast, Accurst, Sunn O))), and Aghast Manor. These are some unsettling and downright scary pieces of music, which should immediately take you back to the world of the film.

I thought Sinister was one of the best mainstream horror films of the last few years. The scares were not as immediate and long lasting as Insidious, but more subtle and sneaky. Visually, it’s astonishing and the performances are all wonderful. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

Last week’s One Week One Band focused on Adam and the Ants. There aren’t as many posts as there were on say, R.E.M., but they still manage to cover a lot of territory. I found the writing style to be academic with flashes of humor, a style that seems antithetical to Adam Ant himselt (more like funny with flashes of the academic), and I confess, a lot of the inside info on the drama of the British punk scene and music criticism went over my head. It’s the kind of thing you might have to read twice. The post about “War Canoe” is eye-opening, to say the least.

If you remember back when Garth Brooks complained that artists don’t receive profits from the resale of CDs, you should be interested in this ongoing Supreme Court case. Actually, you should be interested in it anyway, because it addresses both copyright and intellectual property, even though it’s not about music. It’s about textbooks. From The Hollywood Reporter:

At the Supreme Court, a spotlight will soon shine upon Supap Kirtsaeng, an immigrant from Thailand who came to the United States to study mathematics and attempted to save money by asking his friends and family back home to purchase textbooks and ship them to the United States.

John Wiley, the textbook publisher who sued Kirtsaeng, argues that “robbing copyright owners of the ability to stop parallel imports of non-counterfeit goods . . . would destroy the ability of publishers to set pricing how they see fit.” The whole thing hinges on the first sale doctrine, exclusive distribution rights, and illegal importation as well as how all three intersect with one another.

What is the “first-sale doctrine”? Here’s a brief definition:

The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner.

Naturally, the RIAA and the MPAA agree with Wiley, as shown in their amicus brief:

Extending the first sale doctrine to copies made abroad for distribution in a foreign market could impede authors’ ability to control entry into distinct markets, limit their flexibility to adapt to market conditions, or undermine territorial licensing agreements.

This could impact the resale of music (remember that Bruce Willis thing?). In case you didn’t know, Capitol sued a company called ReDigi earlier this year, claiming (says ReDigi) “the first-sale doctrine cannot apply to digital goods.”

Check out the shamelessness of Capitol. Not only do they take issue with what ReDigi does, they also take issue with ReDigi as an entity as well as their definition of digital music:

“Digital music files have been around for nearly two decades,” says Capitol in its own legal papers. “Unlike ReDigi, no party has been brazen enough to recast them as ‘used’ or to peddle them in an imaginary ‘secondary market’—notions ReDigi invented—because it has always been plainly understood that unauthorized digital transfers involve reproduction and distribution in violation of the Copyright Act.”

But back to Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Supreme Court justices met on this case October 29, but still had not come to a decision. Here’s an intriguing excerpt from THR’s October 30 article on the case:

But when [Justice Elena] Kagan questioned Ted Olson, the attorney representing the publisher, the justice adopted the viewpoint of the petitioner that the exact location of where a copyrighted work was manufactured might not be as important to the functioning of the first-sale doctrine as the work’s legitimacy to exist.

It will be interesting to see how this potential landmark decision turns out.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor