Culturite

You’ve all been waiting for it. Ready? Here’s the pitch: Reddit headlines as a televised news show.

Pretty amazing right? Yeah, I know.

Well, fear not, news aggregators and Diggnation rivals, because here comes YourWeek in all of its social news glory, reddy and willing to incorporate your ever so snarky, two cent attempts at witticisms into a real, live TV show on PBS.

It’s funny that the aim of successful online tech and web ventures is to be welcomed back into the loving Condé Nasty arms of big, old mainstream mama media, isn’t it?

Condé Nast-owned social news aggregator Reddit will today launch a new “interactive public television and internet show,” from WETA Washington, D.C. called Your Week. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian tells us the show will feature Reddits usual topics — politics, arts, international, science, tech, social, sports, and pop culture — chosen by through reader and viewer voting.

Source: valleywag.com via Jarrett Martineau

Materialfor the show will come from hot stories on the reddit front page everyweek. Meta discussions about that content and the show itself will alltake place at yourweek.reddit,so please submit all your wittiest and smartest comments there. Anddon’t worry, the pilot (and hopefully all the future shows) will beavailable online.

Whereas traditional television new stories endonce the show airs, YourWeek — like reddit — will just be thebeginning. Throughout the week you’ll be able to share your thoughts onyourweek.reddit and followup with content you think was missed orcorrections that should be made.

We’re hoping to get somecontent directly from you, the reddit community in the final days ofthis week. We’re curious to hear what you think about lab-grown meat, NFL cheerleaders in Bangalore, and your most boring job – ever. These are just a few of the reddit headlines that are being produced for the pilot.

Also, if you’re musically inclined, we’re partnering with JamGlueto remix the YourWeek theme song — for prizes. The tracks of theoriginal and all the music editing tools you’ll need are all there onthe site. I suspect it won’t be long before we get a RickRoll remix…

We’re finishing taping on the pilot this weekend and I can confirm that the reddit alien will be getting on-camera time.

Source: blog.reddit.com via Jarrett Martineau

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Tags: culturite | internet | news | reddit | Show | Site | social media | Tech & Biz | television | Web | yourweek

Spike Lee is making a splash at Cannes this year, by lashing out at Clint Eastwood for failing to include – or depict – any black soldiers in his recent WWII films: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.

Although Lee’s criticism is valid, he does have an alternate agenda: promoting his own WWII film, “Miracle at St. Anna“, which focuses on an all-black American military division that fought in Italy.

SpikeLee is slamming Clint Eastwood over his two recent Iwo Jima movies,saying the filmmaker overlooked the role of black soldiers during WorldWar II.

Lee – whose next film is this fall’s “Miracle at St. Anna,”the story of an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during thewar – said Eastwood’s 2006 movies “Flags of Our Fathers” and “LettersFrom Iwo Jima” were whites-only affairs.

“He did two films aboutIwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both ofthose films,” Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where hewas a judge in an online short-film competition.

“Many veterans,African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood.In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple asthat. I have a different version,” Lee said.

Source: hosted.ap.org

But there’s more to Lee’s Cannes fest agenda than asserting his vision for filmic depictions of WWI race politics. The director is also in attendance to demonstrate his new media swagger and hand out cash and awards to winners of an online film festival hosted and produced by Babelgum.

Spike Lee was in Cannes to hand out awards of $31,360 each to seven emerging directors whose work was championed by Internet users in an online film festival hosted by Babelgum, an Internet company that streams videos online for free.

The awards ceremony late Tuesday was hosted on the sidelines of the famous French Riviera festival. About 2,000 short films were submitted, and 1,012 films from 86 countries were picked to compete. Hundreds of thousands of people watched the movies, posted comments or voted on their favorite picks.

Films that generated buzz online were whittled down by a jury, and Lee had the final say.

Lee believes there’s more interesting, innovative material online than on TV or in movie theaters.

Source: hosted.ap.org

Love or hate him, Lee’s done a great job of setting the fest abuzz with his news and views. Now where’s the juicy gossip about his diva director’s demands?

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Tags: black | cannes | Film | babelgum | Clint Eastwood | Culture | culturite | festival | iqo jima | Movies | online | race | Soldiers | spike lee | WWII

UPDATE | June 03, 2008 — Yoko Ono’s attempt to prevent Ben Stein from using an excerpt of the John Lennon song “Imagine” in a film about intelligent design has been rejected.

A federal judge on Monday freed the producers of a movie promoting intelligent design to continue using a 15-second recording of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

A New York judge said the makers of Expelled had a right of fair use under copyright law to use a small portion of the work without Yoko Ono’s permission. Ono, the wife of the late Beatle, brought the case in April, saying the movie’s credits made it appear she had licensed the song to the movie.

Source: blog.wired.com via Jarrett Martineau

Ono, who sued along with Lennon’s sons Julian, Sean and EMI Blackwood Music, sought to have the song removed from future releases and the recall of all others.

The show’s producers say it examines the scientific community’s academic suppression of those who ask provocative questions about the origin and development of life. The movie is narrated by Ben Stein, a well-known actor and writer and consists principally of Stein’s interviews with various proponents of intelligent design and defenders of Darwinian evolution.

Source: blog.wired.com via Jarrett Martineau

PREVIOUSLY | May 21, 2008 — All I can say is, go Yoko. “Fair use” should be about fairly asking for permission, not trying to skirt copyright laws on a technicality. “No Intelligence Allowed”? No Kidding.

‘Imagine all the content creators / turning over in the graves… ‘

Yoko Ono wants a judge to imagine a movie challenging the theory of evolution – but without John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in it.

The film’s distributors are fighting to keep it in – and are urging the judge to act quickly so the movie can yet play a role in the presidential campaign this fall.

The judge was expected to rule as early as this week on the legal battle between Lennon’s widow and the makers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

Ono sued in state and federal court, accusing the movie’s producers of infringing on the song’s copyright by using parts without her permission.

The movie, which opened on U.S. screens in April and is set for release in Canada on June 6 and on DVD in October, presents a sympathetic view of intelligent design, the theory that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution alone.

Thefilmmakers acknowledge they did not ask Ono for permission to use 15 to20 seconds of the song. But they argue they are protected by the “fairuse” doctrine, which permits small parts of a copyrighted work to beused without an author’s permission under certain circumstances.

Source: hosted.ap.org via Jarrett Martineau

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Tags: Film | Ono | Yoko | copyright | Culture | culturite | evolution | Imagine | intelligent design | John Lennon | lawsuit | movie | no intelligence allowed | permission

Today at school I learned two new things about R. Kelly and his sex tape trial:

1. Not only was was the girl who allegedly appears on Kelly’s sex tape 13 years old, she was also his goddaughter. (Shudder.)

2. There’s likely a good reason that Simha Jamison is now a “former” friend.

“I kind of know her like the back of my hand.”

Sitting on the witness stand, a 24-year-old woman named Simha Jamison told the court how she was able to identify the girl on the sex tape at the heart of R. Kelly’s child-pornography trial: They were best friends.

She also said the man on the tape is Kelly.

Jamison testified that she and the girl had been best friends approximately since the summer after third grade. The two girls rode bikes, rollerbladed, played basketball and went shopping together when they hung out, which was “every day.”
   

Through her best friend, Jamison said, she also met R. Kelly (godfather to the girl allegedly in the video). The two girls often went places where Kelly played basketball (at a gym called Hoops) and recorded music (at a studio called Trax), as well as his home, including a sauna room known as the “Colorado Room.” Frequently, when her friend visited her godfather, Jamison testified, she saw him give her money: “no less than 100 and no more than 500 [dollars].”

During Jamison’s junior year of high school, she said she saw a sex tape at a friend’s home, and recognized the two individuals on the tape. “I thought she looked just like my best friend … (and) her godfather R. Kelly.”

Source: mtv.com

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Tags: Chicago | Colorado | court | jamison | Singer | Child | Culture | culturite | pornography | r&b | R. Kelly | sex | simha | tape | trial

It’s all about how you present your story.

This spring I read Dave Eggers’ heartbreaking book “What is the What“, which recounts the powerful and tragic experience of Valentino Achak Deng, who was a child refugee during civil war in Sudan.

But even though Eggers’ fantastic book offers a first person account of the real-life story of Achak Deng, the book was published as a novel and is presented as a ‘fictionalized memoir’, not as a work of non-fiction, due to Deng’s inability to recount every single detail of his traumatic early childhood experiences.

It seems that it is only when you’ve claimed absolute authenticity and truth, in your storytelling, that you become subject to the harshest of criticism, skepticism, and questioning. Just look at James Frey.

With this in mind, Ishmael Beah would have been wise to observe Eggers and Deng’s decision, given the controversy that has begun to surround alleged narrative “inconsistencies” in Beah’s memoir of his time serving as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

Author Ishmael Beah disputed reports that his best-selling 2007 memoir about serving as a child soldier in Sierra Leone contained inconsistencies.

Beah, speaking with The Associated Press during his first trip back to Sierra Leone since the book was published, defended his version of events in “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” saying his memoir is based on personal recollection and is not a historical account.

“I decided to write because I wanted to shed light on this experience from my own personal point of view. I never claimed I was going to write a history of the war,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “Only Ishmael Beah can tell his experience. I wrote the memoirs based on my experience as far as my memory could remember.”

Beah’s memoir was hailed as a landmark in wartime writing – but some are skeptical, questioning how the 27-year-old is able to recall incidents that happened a decade earlier when, according to his own account, he was often high on drugs.

A report in The Australian newspaper cited residents near Mattru Jong, not far from Beah’s native village, as saying a major battle described in the book took place in 1995, two years later than the author’s account. The newspaper cited locals who said Beah could not have been a soldier in 1993 because he was still in school.

Source: hosted.ap.org

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Tags: book | controversy | Culture | dave | eggers | Fiction | ishmael beah | memoir | NOVEL | Publish | what is the what

Ms. Rehab has been confirmed for Glastonbury — maybe that means a Jay-Z / Winehouse duet is in the realm of possibility? That would offer some sweet sonic solace, after the madness of Amy’s last few manic months.

Saying they have “total faith” in singer Amy Winehouse, organizers of Britain’s Glastonbury Festival confirmed she will be added to the 2008 lineup.

Winehouse, who in the last six months has bowed out of several high-profile gigs, including the Grammy Awards, is scheduled to play June 28, taking the stage just before headliner Jay-Z.

Winehouse learned on May 15 that she would not be facing charges in connection with a video that seems to show her smoking crack cocaine.

Source: cbc.ca

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Tags: Culture