Passion Fruit – 2010 48-hour Film Project Winner

What if you were given only 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and score a film? This is the challenging premise of the 48-Hour Film Project: "On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete." Local competitions occur in more than 80 cities worldwide. The 2010 winner of the 48 Hour Hampton Roads Film Project was "Passion Fruit," by Jon Abraham (Jon also happens to be a friend of mine--I wrote about his still photography here). Check Jon's winning film at the accompanying YouTube. He is now going to compete against the 80 other international 48 Hour Project city winners--10 of the films will be featured at Cannes. After watching Jon's film, I viewed the winners from some of the other cities. There is a lot of film-making experience on display. For instance, here is the St. Louis entry (the specific requirements for St. Louis were: Charles Crosby, Grocery Store Employee. Prop: a brick. Line of Dialogue: "We'll just have to wait."). Many of these entries are quite humorous. In addition to the above entries, consider this film called "Unwanted," the winner of the Portland Oregon competition.

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A new site for Biblical scholarship?

I have to admit, I enjoy reading about the gaming scene (I live my geek vicariously). I was therefore delighted/amazed/surprised/dumbfounded to read about a new MMO game called The Bible Online warning - extremely slow server The site describes the game as follows

<The Bible Online: Ch1. The Heroes> is based on the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Players can meet and play the real heroes of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants. The game is designed for users to actually experience the Book of Genesis by fulfilling quests of Abraham, which is based on the true stories of the Genesis. As a MMORTS, players are to lead their tribe, build buildings, maintain resources and engage in warfare with other tribes. However, players do not stay in one place, but will go on a quest to go to the Promised Land. Players will lead Abraham’s tribe from Ur to Haran and finally to Canaan.
Most game sites are very excited, but confidently expect the game to be 'adult only' due to the graphic nature of the sex, violence, and general debauchery inherent in the source material. [H/T - Destructoid and Penny Arcade]

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ASCAP attacks Creative Commons

No, this is not a comical make-believe headline from The Onion. ASCAP has lashed out at Creative Commons.

At this moment, we are facing our biggest challenge ever. Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.
This smear campaign is a staggering display of ignorance. Did ASCAP actually hire a lawyer to advise them here? Do they have the faintest idea of what Creative Commons is all about? Here's the response of Creative Commons:
Last week, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sent a fundraising letter to its members calling on them to fight “opponents” such as Creative Commons, falsely claiming that we work to undermine copyright.* Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses – plain and simple. Period. CC licenses are legal tools that creators can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. Without copyright, these tools don’t work. Artists and record labels that want to make their music available to the public for certain uses, like noncommercial sharing or remixing, should consider using CC licenses. Artists and labels that want to reserve all of their copyright rights should absolutely not use CC licenses.
Here's more analysis, from Techdirt.
ASCAP's blatant attack on Creative Commons (and EFF and PK; both of whom focus on consumer rights, but not undermining artist's rights at all) shows their true colors. They're not about artists' rights at all. They're about greater protectionism -- which is not (at all) the same thing.

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