I have a very good feeling about this...

So, have you heard about the brainchild of Casey Pugh, a.k.a. The Chosen One? It's something called Star Wars: Uncut, wherein fans of the original Star Wars choose and remake up to three :15 segments of the 1977 classic. Here's the trailer:



How apt that the subtitle of Star Wars: Episode IV is “A New Hope.” A big ol’ digital quilting bee like this is exactly the way we shall realize the full promise and potential of the Internet. Lawrence Lessig has foreseen it:



Search your feelings; you know it to be true. This will restore balance to the universe, return us to the days of democratized content creation, where there was a lot less difference between those who make art and those who consume it. Things will be like they were—before the dark times, before the Empire.

Fortunately, I understand that, while Lucas has legions of underlings whose sole job is to maintain continuity among all the various narrative threads of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, he’s also said to be pretty tolerant of the fan creations his works inspire. In any case, this is really more parody than unauthorized derivative work; as such it would probably be easier to assert a fair-use defense. On the other hand, if it turned out that Lucas were to prevail in an infringement action, the statutory damages would be, well, more than you could imagine.

Open Daily until 11?

There’s something about this image that just makes me smile. Of course, it also makes the future IP lawyer in me cringe a little, but, on the other hand, it’s got just the right amount of rock-and-roll, bird-flipping attitude that any self-respecting axe purveyor needs to establish its street cred. And really, as long as they’re not hawking counterfeit Strats, I can’t imagine Fender would get too up in arms over (what I assume is) the unauthorized use of its trade dress. Even if they did, I think the shop would have a good shot at mounting a nominative fair use defense. On a related note, do you suppose Christopher Guest would consider his copyright infringed if they actually made each of the dials go to 11?.

The only downside I can see: you get the full effect only when the place is closed.

An awesome piece of awesomeness*

Along with being pretty cool in general, I like this as an opportunity for my movie geek peeps and my ad-biz peeps to all join hands and sing "Misirlou" around the campfire. I believe the font used here is Royale with Cheese, bold condensed. Please feel free to correct me if I've gotten that wrong.



The motion-graphics artist who created it is Jarratt Moody. Thanks to AMG for the link.

*A possibly recurring feature that will showcase category-defying bits of pop-culture ephemera.

As an aside, can anyone tell me how to embed a quicktime movie into a post without uploading it to YouTube or another video hosting service? Is that even possible in Blogger?