This just in via the Hollywood Reporter: Intel is working to create an animated short by combining social networking and computer animation. According to Carolyn Giardina’s report,

The Mass Animation project, which begins in the fall, will be produced and directed by Yair Landau, former vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of Sony Pictures Digital.

Intel is sponsoring the launch of a Facebook page where animators will be able access a collaboration application built on the platform. Established and aspiring animators will be able to work together to create the animated short.

“You can think about ‘American Idol’ in terms of the process,” Landau said. “Everyone will get a chance to participate and vote. … It is a filtered collaboration so that we will have the best possible work at the end.”

Landau is developing the story. Discussions are under way to get the finished film a theatrical release.

Creative tools will be provided. Participating animators will be able to download an evaluation version of Autodesk’s Maya Unlimited 3-D computer-animation software. Reel FX Entertainment animation studio will use proprietary tools to convert selected videos to final-quality animation frames for posting and sharing on the Facebook page. Aniboom will supply the content management infrastructure.

For more information, including how to receive a notice when collaboration begins, visit www.facebook.com/massanimation and become a fan of the page.

The New York Times headlined today with an expose of the effort by the Pentagon to spread the Bush administration’s Iraq talking points by briefing supposedly independent retired commanders for television appearances. Examination by The New York Times has found that hidden behind an appearance of objectivity, “is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance”, and that “most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air”. The NYT is featuring an in-depth multi-media presentation titled “How the Pentagon Spread Its Message” which provides audio, video and primary documents that show how the military’s talking points were disseminated.

Here’s a clip we found of General Montgomery Meigs (one of the Pentagon’s “experts”) who appeared on Meet The Press on August 28, 2005. Notice his Freudian slip while making the case that this war is going far better than what the media is portraying.

There’s rarely any good news about Sudan. A group of volunteers in Chicago decided to change that.

Accompanied by a member of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” ordinary people joined forces in an effort to ship donated medical supplies to the war-torn country, where a new and much-needed hospital is under construction.

It’s a small step in confronting a problem half a world away.

The latest news from the campaign trail involves DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s plea that Barack and Hillary stop fighting for the good of the party, so as not to jeopardize a Democratic win in November.

I imagine the press is praying the candidates don’t take that advice. After all, what else will fill the Election ‘08 special pull-out section of the paper? Articles about town-hall meetings? And how on earth will Wolf Blitzer fill those three hours on “The Situation Room”? Human-interest stories and interviews with the candidates about their platforms? Nooooooo!!! This can’t be happening!

Sure, if Hillary and Barack start braiding each other’s hair, things will get a little dull around the blog-o-sphere and the nation’s newsrooms. We’ll turn back to celebrity gossip and investigate Hollywood’s new baby bumps. But eventually, I admit, something else will inevitably come up to keep the chief political consultants on CNN doing what they do best. The big surprise, of course, is what could possibly pop up in a potential political ceasefire.

As a news editor in college, I hated when everyone was getting along on campus. The pro-Palestinian group was hosting “Interfaith This-and-That” with the pro-Israeli organization… Or nobody had been mugged in a week… Or the university acquiesced to student demands. B-O-R-I-N-G.

It’s a rather perverse notion to want something to go awry. The adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is frighteningly true. But it’ll be interesting to see how the press handles a relatively peaceful campaign after all the hoopla that’s preceded it. Will reporters wish for a better time? A time when campaign supporters and surrogates said really offensive stuff? When folks like Rev. Jeremiah Wright made Don Imus look like Gandhi? Or will there be some much-needed innovation to how the real political news gets reported?

For everyone’s sake, I hope the media doesn’t get what it wants.

OpenSourceCinema.org has posted a call for action to collect video and remixes of footage from the March 19th anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. So “upload your videos, download other people’s videos, remix them, upload them again and show everyone what the March 19th actions meant to you.” For more info about the protest or to find an event near you (660 events have been scheduled around the U.S.), visit 5yearstoomany.org. Here’s a video from the site:

If protests are not your thing, Brett Gaylor, the creator of OpenSourceCinema, is also working on a collaborative documentary film project tentatively titled “Basement Tapes” about copyright in the digital age. He urges participants to comment, change, and create the script on his Wikifilm which will eventually be made into a feature film.

This week 145 million pounds of ground beef were recalled after the Humane Society of the United States released an undercover video showing cows being dragged with chains across a cement floor and moved to slaughter with forklifts. However, this is not the first and will certainly not be the last video to shock the American public by revealing where their food comes from.

In this excerpt from the 2003 film “The Corporation” (which is available for free on google video), the issue of rBS or rBGH use in dairy cows is addressed. These substances were banned in Europe and Canada but dairy producers in the United States continue to subject cattle to the infection-causing drugs - the results of which are most likely in the milk you drink everyday…

Photo via psmphotography

Since when did outer space a) get so off-the-chain exciting and b) receive the amount of press that it has over the past week?

I guess the answers to both questions go hand-in-hand: when crazy stuff happens in space, people listen. And there’s been plenty of space happenings to go around lately.

First, there’s the safe return of the shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts on Wednesday. The crew, which included a suburban Chicago native (galactic shout-out!), had been on a mission to deliver a $2 billion European research laboratory to the International Space Station. Of course, leave it to America to do Europe’s dirty work!

Then astronomers discovered planets orbiting a star some 5,000 light-years away, implying that “solar systems like ours may be unexpectedly common,” according to Scientific American. (Still don’t believe in aliens?)

The talk of the town yesterday had to be when/where/how to watch the total lunar eclipse, which won’t happen again for two years. I was especially taken by Newsday’s coverage of the occasion:

The last total lunar eclipse until 2010 was accompanied by cameo appearances by Saturn and the bright star Regulus on either side of the veiled full moon.

In some spots, skywatchers viewing through a telescope could also see Saturn’s handsome rings.

Wow, so that’s what space porn sounds like!

Continue Reading…

Forget about Tribune boss Sam Zell’s mea culpa, and don’t expect him to put a muzzle on himself any time soon. The fact is, Zell himself is the Tribune Company’s most valuable asset because the outspoken billionaire knows how to sell papers. When he cussed out that photog in Florida a few weeks ago, it seemed like Zell just had no self-control. But according to Zell, those seemingly random outbursts are actually part of a well-coordinated master plan.

Every time the guy opens his mouth, there’s a media frenzy. To capitalize on it, he should just put himself on permanent public speaking duty and require his scribes to make everything he says front-page news. Papers would be flying off newsstands. Zell seems to realize this now, and he’s trying to somehow rally the company around his own outbursts — at least that’s what he suggested when he addressed his Chicago staff yesterday. A video of the entire meeting is below, and we’ve highlighted some of the more notable parts.

Sam Zell’s Talk at the Chicago Tribune from margaret on Vimeo.

Most of the meeting involved your typical corporate money stuff (bleh), until the Chicago Tribune’s Public Editor Timothy J. McNulty addressed Zell’s apparent transgressions (about 57:15 into the video). McNulty told Zell:

A number of people at the company — and especially women — have been deeply offended by some of the statements you said in other places and other venues…it’s taken so long for people — especially women — to rise in the profession, and some of them feel personally disrespected.

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On his radio talk show yesterday, Bill O’Reilly took a call from one of his listeners addressing Michelle Obama’s apparent gaffe from earlier in the week (“for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”) The caller, who identified herself as Maryanne, claimed to have insight into the character of Michelle Obama, saying that she is “very angry” and “militant.”

In response, O’Reilly came to Obama’s defense with this bizarre rant:

You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they’re thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them…That’s wrong. And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit….[Media Matters has the full quote and clip]

This raises a several questions: Was this — as it seems — a veiled attack on Michelle Obama, and an attempt to stir up racist sentiment in the far right? And the corollary: does this represent a new line of attack for the conservative smear machine, to try to portray Michelle Obama as a militant, anti-USA African American? And how will FOX News respond? Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman made a similar reference to Tiger Woods in a January telecast when she joked that Woods’ rivals should “lynch him in a back alley.” The Golf Channel was forced to suspend her for two weeks in response to public outrage — will O’Reilly get similar treatment?

Sure, O’Reilly was apparently defending Obama against potentially harmful rumors, but his choice of words is the only part of the exchange that will be remembered. And what if there is indeed “evidence” or “hard facts”? Then he does want to go on a lynching party?

O’Reilly b-quote photo via agitprop

Remember that guy who lost his job at CNN for blogging last week? Even though he’s out of work, Chez Pazienza still has the blog, and he’s got a score to settle.

At least that’s the impression that Pazienza gives in his 3,000-word Huffington Post blog yesterday. The post is a rambling account of Panzienza’s own rise and fall in TV news. He tells stories of his rabble-rousing college days, positioning himself as a rebel and making it seem like he’s going to have some real dirt on CNN, but what follows is just a more detailed account of what we already knew. Continue Reading…