You Couldn't Make this Stuff Up Dept.

Windows Vista requires a help file to open the box.

[Via Daring Fireball]

The Wrong Trousers sing "Video Killed the Radio Star"

So charming I bought the CD.

[Thanks to John Merriman for the link.]

JJ Abrams talks at TED

...on why closed boxes obsess him.

Some brilliant analysis of the best moments in movies like JAWS.

The dirty little secret about why I'm missing B-Fest

Normally at this time of year I'd be packing up my travel gear and heading north for the snowy wastes of Chicago for B-Fest, but this year my job keeps me from doing that. Instead I am packing up my travel gear and heading north (and west) for the snowy wastes of Park City, Utah. Yes, I'm going to Sundance.

Well, technically Slamdance, since that's the festival our company is working with, but it's all part of the crazy Sundance/Slamdance/Xdance/Tromadance mashup that is Park City in late January. Naturally I'll be blogging the whole thing as time allows and will probably write a bit about it when I get back.

Watch for on-the-ground blog posts over on my film festival related blog, Film Festival Secrets.

I will also be posting pictures to my Flickr account while I'm there.

If by some chance you'll be in Park City this week as well, shoot me an e-mail: chris at stomptokyo dot com. Maybe I'll see you in the aisles . . . though not the beloved aisles of B-Fest.

RIP Vampira

Long live Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira.

NetNewsWire is now free. As in beer.

I've been a paying user of NetNewsWire for years, and this is great news -- parent company Newsgator is releasing all of its consumer level products (including the online version and the Windows-based FeedDemon) completely free of charge. If you're not using a newsreader to keep up with your favorite blogs and other regularly-updating sites, you no longer have an excuse. The very best products in this realm are now free. (I don't have any experience with FeedDemon, but I'm assuming it's on par with NNW.)

I use NetNewsWire for my serious feed reading (in combination with MarsEdit for posting to my various blogs) and the iPhone-optimized version of NewsGator, which stays in sync with NetNewsWire, for my idle away-from-my-Mac blog surfing. It's an ideal combination, it saves me a ton of time, and now I don't even have to shell out every year or so for the privilege.

Download NetNewsWire 3.1 for free.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

B-Fest 2008 Schedule Revealed

Does it hurt that I can't go to B-Fest this year?

Yes. Yes it does.

Italian Spiderman Trailer

Blake over at Cinema Is Dope recommended I take a gander at this -- how could I not share it with you?

Holy Crap - Daily Show, Colbert Report return to the air

I'm not sure how I missed this, but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are back on the air, without benefit of their writers. If your Tivo didn't catch it, you can catch up on the first night back over at thedailyshow.com. And yeah, the whole "watch it on the Internet" thing is a large part of what the strike is about.

Warner adopts Blu-Ray; Paramount to follow suit?

A little over a month ago I wrote that I was keeping out of the hi-def DVD format wars for a while, but that if I had to make a choice I'd probably go with Blu-Ray. Looks like my instincts were good as Warner Bros. announced last Friday that it would be releasing its films exclusively in the Blu-Ray format. (For those catching up, Sony was one of the major players in the consortium that created the Blu-Ray format and Toshiba appears to be heading up the rival HD-DVD format.)

Industry analysts are falling all over themselves to predict the end of the format war -- I think everyone (except perhaps the HD-DVD consortium) wants a quick end to this one, but it doesn't seem over quite yet. There were an awful lot of HD-DVD players sold at deep discount this Christmas, and a large number of PS3 systems (which have Blu-Ray players built in) out there as well.

The player to watch at this point seems to be Paramount Pictures, which famously took a $150 million payoff to declare its exclusive commitment to Toshiba's format back in August. Just four months later, however, rumors have it that Paramount may have an escape clause in that contract that permits it to abandon that position in the event that Warner commits to Blu-Ray -- which of course, it just did.

I'm still planning to bide my time and wait for a price drop on the PS-3 (and hopefully they'll figure out the whole backwards-compatibility thing in the meantime), but it's looking good for those folks who chose Blu-Ray as their high definition DVD format. Stay tuned.