Week Ending 20th January, 2002	Page 1
Junior Porn Moguls	posted 20 Jan 2002
Four Florida high school students aged between 15 and 17 were recently arrested on child pornography charges for making a porn video starring a 14 year old female classmate. The girl in question had signed a $1,000 contract in which all sex acts she was required to perform were explicitly spelt out. Once the work was completed, the boys' intention was to charge their friends to see it. The girl would then receive "a percentage of the profits"... Is this exploitation? Or simply a business transaction in which all parties benefit? And considering the ages of the participants, should it really be classified as child pornography?... Your thoughts?
Italian Fascist Hobbit Camp, Anyone?	posted 20 Jan 2002
If you thought Harry Potter's insidious attempts to turn children on to satanism were bad, check this out... For the past 25 years, the Italian Fascist movement has been using Tolkein to lure young people into its fold. They've even been holding Hobbit Camps, which the Independent describes as being "a cross between a boy scout jamboree and a paramilitary camp". Such is the movement's affection for JRR's work, that its parliamentary wing even organised their own private screening of Fellowship of The Ring. According to Italy's telecommunications minister, who attended the screening: "Tolkein helped design our value system."
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon To Be Put To The Test	posted 20 Jan 2002
We all know that hoary old game where it only takes six steps to link Kevin Bacon with any other actor, right?... Well, that six degrees of separation thing was actually a theory about social interaction posited over 30 years ago. It's never actually been proven, but now it's about to be put to the test by a research group at Columbia University. They're getting people to use email in an attempt to prove that anyone can contact anyone else in the world using a chain of entries in personal address books.
The Horror... Bruckheimer Considers Making 9-11 Movie	posted 20 Jan 2002
Action movie titan Jerry Bruckheimer, who gave us such "epics" as Top Gun, Armageddon and Pearl Harbour, has expressed his interest in one day producing a movie about the events of Sept 11. I can just see it now... Firemen Ben Affleck and Cuba Gooding Jr have just pulled Liv Tyler from the rubble... CUBA : Well, Jack, do you think the nightmare is over? BEN : Yes, but the fight has only just begun. LIV : Kiss me, Jack!...
Independent Perspectives on 9-11	posted 20 Jan 2002
Groan! Not another Sept 11 related posting!... Well, this one is pretty worthwhile. It's a directory of independent films that relate in some way to the events of that date last year. And it's not just docos about the actual bombing, there are also films about Afghan/Muslim culture and women in the Muslim world, as well as some critiques of media war coverage.
It's A Brady Bunch For The New Millienium !	posted 20 Jan 2002
Hank Stuever can have his de-patriarched gaggle of antiseptic WASPs, I've found the ultimate sitcom family - Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon, and his teenage kids, Jack and Kelly!... From March 5, viewers of MTV in the States will get the chance to peek inside the family life of the heavy metal icon in what's being called "America's first reality sitcom". They'll laugh as Ozzy wrestles with a TV remote, gasp as Jack sets the kitchen on fire, and jump from their chairs in outrage at neighbours who play loud folk music... So what made them want to be hard rocks's answer to Sylvania Waters? According to Sharon: "I just thought America needed to see what a normal family was really like."
How Mike Brady Got 'Disappeared'	posted 20 Jan 2002
When Washington Post staff writer Hank Stuever noticed that Mike Brady's face was missing from all Brady Bunch memorabilia, he immediately suspected some "Stalin-era" type purge. Maybe it was because he died of AIDS and was a closet homosexual... But, no, Robert Reed, who played the character, simply didn't want his face on T-shirts. He was never completely comfortable with his typecasting as the all-American Dad... The truly unsettling thing about this article is that this doesn't seem to matter to Hank and a Bradymaniac he meets on his travels. Which just confirms what I've always thought about Brady Bunch fans...
Meet Morpheus : Napster For Movie Buffs	posted 20 Jan 2002
The movie studios are sueing the makers of Morpheus and are likening its users to terrorists, so it must be good... Basically, it's a file-sharing application like Napster, but one that can be used to share any digital medium. As a result, it has become one of the primary means of downloading pirated videos, an activity that is finally becoming viable thanks to video compression technology and the increasing size of computer hard-drives. You can download it from C-Net.
Television Addiction	posted 20 Jan 2002
Most scientific articles on the effects of television tend to focus on the effect of watching too much violence. This one, however, looks at "the basic allure of the small screen--the medium, as opposed to the message". As you might expect, it draws all the obvious links between watching a lot of TV and diminished brain activity and concludes that it is a form of "substance dependency". My favourite bit, though, was the test subjects describing the effects of TV withdrawal: "The family walked around like a chicken without a head." "It was terrible. We did nothing--my husband and I talked."
No Place For Political Correctness in Films	posted 20 Jan 2002
Reporting from Sundance, Roger Ebert attacks the idea that filmmakers from ethnic minorities have a responsibility to portray their communities in a positive light. His comments were prompted by two films that played at the festival. The first was Better Luck Tomorrow by Justin Lin which showed Asian-American straight-A students descending into amoral violence. In the wake of its screening, Lin was condemned for producing a "bleak, negative, amoral film" that did not paint a "helpful portrait" of his community. A similar fate befell the subjects of the documentary Our America, two black teenagers who were given the opportunity to make a radio documentary about their lives in a poverty-sticken housing complex. When the picture they painted was less than rosy, they were attacked by community leaders who concluded that white producers must have put words in their mouth... Your thoughts on this issue?
Woman Jailed For Overdue Videos	posted 20 Jan 2002
Being a serial offender myself, this article sent a chill up my spine... After filing a police report about a minor accident, Anna Mae Leach found herself in the can for a whole week - but not because of the accident. No, the police did a warrant check and found out that she was wanted for videos that she had hired in 1989 and never returned!... Disappointingly, the article doesn't tell us what the videos were...
The Sort Of Marketing Money Can't Buy	posted 20 Jan 2002
Film Cement's favourite critics - those zany fundy Christians at ChildCare Action Project - decided to check out David Lynch's newie, Mulholland Park, but couldn't even make it to the end of the flick... When the two female leads got their gear off 40 minutes from the end and began indulging in "nude lesbian licking kissing", that was enough for CAP!... By posting this revelation on their site, and thus alerting the geek community to it, they have ensured that the film will become a box office hit.
New Wallace And Gromit Coming To The Web !	posted 20 Jan 2002
That's right! According to the Aardman website, Nick Park has begun production on 12 new 1 minute shorts starring everyone's favourite plasticine inventor and his dog. Each film will focus on one of Wallace's inventions and they're due online in late 2002. Smashing!
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