Entertainment

Just how dark is Pullman's His Dark Materials?

Yes, this is off-topic, but I also think it's important.

The big furor of late is that Hollywood is soon to release The Golden Compass, the first movie made from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. Pullman, an avowed atheist, decided to write the anti-Narnia children's series, killing off god and the church along the way. Church-going parents have been flooding email in-boxes with warnings not to see the movie ever since word got out that a movie would be made.

Apparently, these people have not read the books or have a tenuous grasp on their faith. I think it's been roughly 34 years since I missed a day of church (I'm 34) and consider myself a devoutly religious (and spiritual, since some persist in making a distinction) person. I loved the books and expect the movie to be excellent.

Indeed, my one concern with the movie is how much the anti-religious aspect has been toned down to appeal to mainstream audiences. It is Pullman's questioning of faith in organized religion that I found so refreshing and uplifting of my own faith.… Read more

Prince to sue The Pirate Bay

Continuing an aggressive campaign to defend his copyrights, pop star Prince is preparing to file lawsuits within the next few days in three countries--including the United States--against The Pirate Bay, CNET News.com has learned.

One of the world's best-known BitTorrent indexing sites, The Pirate Bay has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood's requests to remove them. The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, but the service is internationally famous for being a highly effective file-sharing tool.

Prince will file similar … Read more

Mod My Life is so amazingly uncomfortable it's wonderful

I've really enjoyed seeing the lifecasting movement take off. I can't say I feel the need to visit these sites on a regular basis, but like a roller coaster built for children, they provide enjoyable moments mixed in with some less-than-incredible build-up. One of the newest entrants to the space is Mod My Life, which shares a lot in common with its other lifecasting brethren by mixing up live Webcam footage with user chat. The twist is that the person with the Webcam is an actor or comedian, and the audience gets to control what he or she is doing.

All the user-created actions are created and voted on by users, and they show up in an upcoming section that lets the group weed out the good ideas from the bad. The four most popular get dropped into a voting pool where users can vote on the item as many times as they like until the time runs out. The "Modstars," which are the people with the cameras strapped to their heads, then has to go do what people have told them to do.

While watching last night I was treated to several awkward moments of Modstar Jason Wilder Evans bothering people around the greater New York area before managing to somehow walk into what looked like an attempted robbery with a baseball bat. The robbery had just been broken up by the convenience store's security guard. We never really found out what happened, but the damage had been done, and I sat quietly in awe along with the rest of the viewers as Jason called the police and recounted what had happened with other witnesses.

The rest of the show wasn't nearly as gripping as that bit, but like the creators have told me, a lot of it depends on the Modstar, and other variables like location, time of day, and what ideas the community has got cooking. In many ways it's a lot like Justin.TV when they first started out. Far from what Justin Kan and company have expanded to now with their platform and live channel selection, Mod My Life is treading a slightly different path and trying to pack as much as they can into just an hour or less instead of going for daylong marathons. For that, I think viewers who are willing to base their watching around the "time slot" will be getting more bang for their buck (note: the site is free).

He's back on eBay: Manny being hemi

Update: The Man-Ram's car is now up for bidding on eBay.

If you just missed out on buying the grill Boston Red Sox left-fielder Manny Ramirez was hawking on eBay this past spring, maybe you'll have better luck buying his car.

The Boston Herald reports Ramirez will be selling his 2006 Chrysler 300M SRT8 on eBay starting tonight. A quick search of eBay revealed Ramirez hadn't put the car up for bidding at the time of this post.

This isn't your standard-issue Chrysler. Ramirez's custom ride is chromed-out, fitted with 22-inch rims, and has a … Read more

Screenwriters strike playlist

While some 12,000 TV and film screenwriters go on strike this week, people are filling the void by turning to other forms of media, such as DVDs and the Internet. Ironically, these outlets are exactly what the members of the Writers Guild want more of the profit of (and don't want people to support). They're hoping to come to an agreement soon, although the last walk out like this (in 1988) lasted for five months. Ouch.

We'll miss The Office, Desperate Housewives and Conan O'brien, but it's not the end of the world, right? … Read more

Hurricane Chris podcast

There's a new king of ringtones, and he's only 18 years old. Riding the success of his summer smash single "A Bay Bay," Shreveport, Louisiana rapper Hurricane Chris has gone on to sell an astounding 3 million ringtones. Oh, and he also recently released his debut album, 51/50 Ratchet, on Polo Grounds Music/J Records. Luckily for us, his newfound success didn't deter him from joining us for a podcast interview inside our renowned Studio C.

A pop-up book that's also a lamp

There are a lot of things that have racked up frequent flier miles on Crave. Oddly shaped USB drives, awe-inducing Guitar Hero videos, and Swarovsky-covered crap are all par for the course on the average day.

As far as I know, though, this is the first pop-up book we've seen that is also a fully operational lamp. And that's worth blogging about.

When opened, the Book of Lights creates an LED-powered pop-up lamp.

Available in traditional lampshade and Parisian streetlamp versions, it's available for preorder for $95 on Charles & Marie.

The big, linen-bound book is available … Read more

Eisner's advice to striking writers: Blame Steve Jobs, not the studios

NEW YORK--In his keynote speech on Wednesday morning at the Media and Money conference hosted by Dow Jones and Nielsen, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner talked about writers as though they were a minority group that he didn't particularly understand well. "I like writers. Some of my best friends are writers," he said as though attempting to save face. But nevertheless, his foremost epithet for the ongoing Writer's Guild of America strike was "stupid."

"I see stupid strikes, and I see less stupid strikes. I see smart strikes," Eisner said in the … Read more

Radiohead's Web venture spooks Wall Street

Wall Street is taking record labels to task for lackluster Web sales, spiraling CD revenue, and the defections of marquee acts such as Madonna and Radiohead.

Two analysts downgraded Warner Music Group last week, leading to a sharp drop in the company's stock price. One of the analysts, Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, penned a gloomy report about why he thinks the sector is headed for even greater losses.

"No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide … Read more

Geeking out: Gorgeous digital edition magazines

Who says magazines are dead? Not Fortune Small Business Magazine, Hearst Magazines, or Red Herring. And certainly not Olive Software, the Santa Clara, Calif., company responsible for creating the interactive digital twins of their print issues.

Like the best discoveries, I stepped into Olive Software's work by accident, while flipping through the digital leaves of Fortune Small Business Magazine. As a champion of downloadable and Web apps for consumers, I wouldn't normally seek out this kind of story, but the experience was too gratifying not to share. After all, would I hold back from you?

Click once and the magazine blooms in its self-contained online reader. Click again, this time on the right arrow, and the cover unfurls to reveal a faithful representation of the magazine's glossy, full-page interior, down to the shadowed hollow where the pages meet the binding. Flip through to read articles horizontally across multiple pages, each one adhering to the original layout, rather than dive-bombing into a vertical scroll that makes do with the Web's predilection for linear storytelling.… Read more