Using a Fandom to Help with Movie Negotiations?

Some of you may remember I ran the Harry Potter Web site The Leaky Cauldron (TLC) for a few years. I am essentially Emeritus at this point. One of the key attributes of TLC was to always go to the source to verify information. A core value I brought with me and current Editorial Director/Webmistress Melissa Anelli bolstered with her long-time experience in publishing and reporting.

Around February 7th, TLC posted confirmation directly from Warner Brothers that actor Gary Oldman would be reprising his role of "Sirius Black" in the next movie - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Then the fun started. Oldman's partner and agent, Douglas Urbanski, began to use the news section of his Web site to dispute Warner Brothers' statements. A new update from Urbanski was posted today:

Today we take the further step of noting that it does not look likely that Mr. Oldman will once again play the role of Sirius Black. For reasons known only to the producers of the Potter film, Mr. Oldman has not been engaged. As we approach the beginning of March we are in the "window of commitments" wherein virtually any job accepted would render Mr. Oldman unavailable for this film. The producers, we presume, are well aware of how this all works. While one does not want to jump to wrong conclusions, there is a growing sense that it was never the intention for them to have Mr. Oldman return.

I find this fascinating and while I know fandoms have been used in the past to encourage the casting of a particular actor in a movie role, I wonder if this is really the first time we've seen this sort of back-and-forth in this large a fandom and this public a forum.

Bush Administration Credibility at an All Time Low: No Trust

I think this article by Washington Post reporter Dan Froomkin sums up a lot of the issues right now. You have Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Vice President Dick Cheney's ex-Chief of Staff testifying that he was told by his bosses that he could release information about Valerie Plame being a CIA agent.

It also touches upon the Hurricane Katrina scandal which former FEMA Director Mike Brown is testifying about in Congress today stating that both the Department of Homeland Security and the White House knew the night of the levee breaches and not the day after as they claimed. And the big one - the NSA's domestic wiretapping program which, according to reports, the White House has rebriefed the National Security subcommittee on with some alleged change in support.

I've also heard about Bush sneaking drilling in Alaska's ANWR into his new budget only a few days after stating about America's "addiction to oil" in his State of the Union.

Not a good week for the Bush Administration. I'm losing count on my fingers with all the scandals.

Coolest Moo Ever: Scream for Ice Cream!

Wow. I just watched a video from Network World at the DEMO 2006 conference about MooBella. It's basically a Linux-powered vending machine that makes and dispenses a scoop of FRESH ice cream with up to 96 different flavor combos. It's also Internet capabale so owners can monitor any issues, stock etc. Ice Cream without perservatives! Sweet. The company is based in Taunton, MA

(In an interesting sidenote, the video of "see what people think (WMV)" was produced by a company in Chicopee that DaemonStar works for.)

HAZMAT Drill: Moulaged Rouge

I got up at 5:30am ET this morning to head down to Mass. General Hospital for a Cold Weather HAZMAT drill I heard about a few days prior. I was to play a victim and I had volunteered to be a critical patient which could put me on either a backboard or in a wheelchair. I stressed that I was a big guy.

Continue reading "HAZMAT Drill: Moulaged Rouge"

BrainStream: The e-Family Calendar

I've been playing around with various online calendar and address book services and getting frustrated at having to keep everything in synch with the family paper calendar. I've been peripherally participating in the microformats project which involves contextually marking up date-related information in HTML. It's an incredibly nifty idea especially since several of the major search engines are looking to index this semantically defined information.

Anyway, I was thinking about the developments of ePaper and thin clients - why not create one that has an 802.11a/b/g card, a bluetooth card, has compatibility with vcard and icalendar/vcalendar and the ability to synchronize with various online services through API plugins. The user-interface would be via a stylus of some sort and it would be the size of a calendar except no need to get a new one every year - simply download a set of standards-based calendar "skins", doing whatever the heck you want. Anytime you add an event, it simply uploads it to the service of your choice and stays synchronized with that. If each of the family members have different calendar services of choice then you create accounts with those services and set your calendar to synchronize with all of them.

The same can be done with an address book and contact list - perhaps it can connect and synchronize with all these damn social networks out there as well.

Flight 93 Teaser Trailer

It's been a long time since a movie trailer has evoked quite the raw emotion of sadness, mourning, fear, and despair accompanied with shivvering and the hair prickling on the back of my neck - that I felt while watching the teaser for Flight 93 due out this April.

Politicians and their staffers editing out the bad stuff on Wikipedia

I was listening to NPR's Day to Day and heard a fabulous story about people coming from various senate.gov and house.gov IP addresses and editing varying Representative and Senator's entries on Wikipedia - mostly cleaning up "bad" stuff and adding glowing spin. I'm embarassed to say the investigation was kicked off by MA Representative Marty Meehan's entry, (my Rep is John Tierney who rocks), but it's exposed an incredible amount of such editing through the Legislative branch. Apparently Wikipedia has banned the IP range but that won't stop people going through a proxy. However, I think that that people will be watching the entries more closely.

Cindy Sheehan Arrested in State of Union for Wearing Shirt

Unbelievable. I would truly like to know what the rules are that allow Capitol security to squelch Freedom of Expression. Cindy Sheehan was roughly escorted out of the State of the Union for wearing a T-Shirt that allegedly said "245 Dead. How many more?". She was taken to a nearby police station and arrested. Also interesting- so was the wife of "powerful" Republican Rep C.W. Bill Young of Florida, (Beverly Young), for wearing a shirt that said "Support our troops - Defending our freedom". Good grief.