Changing Markets

On Wednesday, January 18th, Google, Wikipedia, and a number of other websites “went black” to stand in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. On the following day, the FBI moved in an international effort to bring down the file locker website Megaupload on charges of racketeering, “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement,” criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. Once more these actions have got me thinking about copyright and piracy. More specifically it got me thinking about the actions that organizations like the Motion Picture Associate of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have taken to try to protect themselves against piracy.

Alcatraz: The Latest Fiction from The Rock

Earlier this week, Fox premiered its new winter series, Alcatraz, adding another entry to the canon of lore surrounding the decommissioned San Francisco prison. Despite a lukewarm score of 63 on media critic amalgam site metacritic.com, I felt that Alcatraz's two hour premiere, consisting of two distinct episodes, made a decent showing of itself.

If you missed the half-hearted publicity campaign and/or are too busy for Wikipedia or IMDB, Alcatraz explores a supernatural cause of the island prison's shutdown, complete with mysterious disappearances and government coverup. The show's premise is that 302 prisoners (and, presumably, guards) vanished from the island one evening in 1960 (or possibly 1963- the characters and subtitles seem to disagree on this point), leaving two patrolmen from the mainland to discover the facility entirely vacant. Fast-forward to the present day, when the missing prisoners have begun to resurface, committing their crimes in the modern world.

Five Things You Should Watch Because I Say So

January sucks. It’s a fact of life and everyone knows it. If you were born or married in January, I’m sorry but it’s true and you should have known better. The weather sucks, the movies suck, and you have to listen to people you don’t care about talk about art movies you haven’t seen because they look really depressing. So, to ease the pain, here are five things that are great and will help tide you over until you can go outside again without putting on four layers. Also, all but one of these are on Netflix instant view, which will make them all easier to watch if you have it.

Ryan’s Favorite List from 2011

I was going to sit down and make a “best of” list for the year, but it struck me as so cliché that I couldn’t go through with it. However, being the sentimental type, I wanted to at least write something about what pop culture has brought me this year. What I decided on was to create a list of the best things I have experienced this year, not necessarily what was released this year. This is not THE year in review; it is MY year in review.