October 13, 2015

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Entertainment October 13, 2015

Today in Movie Culture: If Steve Jobs Made 'Steve Jobs,' a Will Ferrell-themed Bar and More

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:

Movie Parody of the Day:

If you don’t like the flawed version of Steve Jobs seen in Steve Jobs, maybe you’ll like the (fake) biopic he (Vulture) made about himself:

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Movie-themed Business of the Day:

Here’s a new bar in New York City devoted to all things Will Ferrell. The best part is the signature drinks named for his best movie quotes (via /Film):

We are open Monday -Saturday from 4pm and starting November 12pm! #stayclassybar #stayclassynyc

A photo posted by Stay Classy New York (@stayclassybar) on Oct 11, 2015 at 12:26pm PDT

Movie Takedown of the Day:

With the movie hitting home video next week, Honest Trailers bite down hard on Jurassic World:

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Fan Art of the Day:

X-Men: Apocalypse looks like an ’80s teen movie in some photos, so this The Breakfast Club poster parody by William Daniel Buller is perfect (via Nathan Dunbar):

Musical Movie Parody of the Day:

Watch puppet versions of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees perform a parody of “Dream a Little Dream” in a new episode of Glove and Boots (via i09):

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Fan Theory of the Day:

The latest crazy idea from the guys at The Film Theorists poses the idea that “the real world” in the Matrix trilogy is still a part of the Matrix:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Josephine Hull and friend after she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Harvey, which opened 65 years ago today.

Editing Lesson of the Day:

How did they make Birdman look like it was one long continuous shot? Frame by Frame shows us where some of the cuts are:

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Cosplay of the Day:

Don’t be disgusted that one of the main Inside Out characters is missing from this otherwise wonderfully colorful cosplay group. Meanwhile, the film hits Digital HD and Disney Movies Anywhere today. (via KamiKame):

Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Strange Days. Watch the original trailer for the Kathryn Bigelow-helmed sci-fi movie below.

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Sports October 13, 2015

Cubs First: Clinch Postseason Series At Wrigley Field; Beat Cardinals 6-4

Fans gather on the streets outside of Wrigley Field after the Cubs won 6-4 in Game 4 of baseball's National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Tuesday in Chicago.

Fans gather on the streets outside of Wrigley Field after the Cubs won 6-4 in Game 4 of baseball’s National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Tuesday in Chicago. Paul Beaty/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Beaty/AP

Joe Maddon posed for a selfie on the field with his wife. Jon Lester sprayed champagne with his young son. Rocker Eddie Vedder partied on the mound.

For the Chicago Cubs and their ever-hopeful fans, this bash was a long time in the making.

Kyle Schwarber, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez homered and the fresh Cubs clinched a postseason series at Wrigley Field for the first time ever, beating the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 Tuesday to win the NL Division Series in four games.

“This is all just baseball fantasy, right?” a drenched chairman Tom Ricketts said.

Only once since they last brought home the World Series in 1908 had the Cubs won a playoff series and never before had they finished off the job at their century-plus-old ballpark.

But with a raucous, towel-waving crowd jamming the Friendly Confines, the North Siders gave generations of fans exactly what they wanted. And as they gathered in the pulsating neighborhood, the lit-up marquee at Wrigley Field said it all: Cubs Win.

“I can only imagine what the next thing is going to look like,” said Lester, the lefty who twice won the World Series with Boston. “And the next thing after that.”

The crowd started roaring before the first pitch. And when closer Hector Rondon struck out Stephen Piscotty on a ball in the dirt and catcher Miguel Montero made the tag to end it, the Cubs came streaming out of the dugout.

“They deserve it,” Rizzo said in the middle of the party. “Hopefully, this is just a taste of what’s to come.”

Up-and-comers all season under their first-year manager, Maddon’s bunch of wild-card Cubs had arrived.

As the music blared and the strobe lights flashed in the clubhouse, Cubs players and coaches soaked each other. Then they took the celebration back onto the field as fans went crazy — Vedder, from the local area, pitched right in.

The Cubs will face the winner of the Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Mets matchup. The Mets took a 2-1 lead into Game 4 Tuesday night.

Chicago will play Game 1 Saturday on the road.

No team was hotter down the stretch than Chicago, which finished third in the majors with 97 wins after five straight losing seasons.

The Cubs knocked out the two teams that finished ahead of them in the NL Central, beating Pittsburgh in the wild-card game and sending St. Louis home after it led the majors with 100 wins.

“I think we’re too young to even realize what we just did,” young slugger Kris Bryant said. “It truly is a special time right now.”

The banged-up Cardinals had reached the NLCS in the last four years.

“It was just unfortunate,” St. Louis manager Mike Matheny said. “This is a team that was as impressive to watch from Day One as any team I’ve ever been around.”

“That’s always hard to walk away from. We had an opportunity maybe to get back home and do things differently, but they took advantage of the opportunities they had,” he said.

Rizzo’s solo drive to right off losing pitcher Kevin Siegrist in the sixth put Chicago back on top 5-4 after St. Louis scored two in the top half.

As if the fans were already hollering at the top of their lungs after that home run, they were really screaming after Schwarber’s monstrous shot leading off the seventh. The ball landed on top of the right-field videoboard and wound up nestled against a railing on the front edge.

The late drives by Rizzo and Schwarber along with Baez’s three-run homer off John Lackey in the second came after Chicago set a postseason record with six long balls in Monday’s win.

And with the ball flying out again, the Cubs won for the 12th time in 13 games.

Cubs starter Jason Hammel allowed two runs and three hits. He exited after giving up a leadoff walk to Jhonny Peralta in the fourth.

Seven relievers combined to hold the Cardinals to two runs and five hits the rest of the way. Trevor Cahill picked up the win and Rondon worked the ninth for the save.

Hammel settled down after giving up a two-run homer to Piscotty on the game’s fourth pitch. He also singled in a run with two out in the second before Baez connected against Lackey, the man the Cardinals were counting on to keep their season going, to make it 4-2.

Lackey gave up four runs and four hits over three innings after outpitching former teammate Lester in a dominant series opener.

The Cardinals, playing without catcher Yadier Molina (left thumb), failed to advance in the postseason after winning at least one series the previous four years.

“I definitely think the ballpark had something to do with this. They also have a really good lineup,” Lackey said.

St. Louis scored two in the sixth to tie it. But the rally ended with Tony Cruz — who drove in a run with a two-out double — getting thrown out at home by Jorge Soler trying to score on Brandon Moss’ RBI single to right.

“I will be shocked if they’re not in the World Series or winning it,” Piscotty said. “They’re playing well. You got to tip your hat.”

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Business October 13, 2015

Twitter's Suspension of Sports Media Revives Debate Over Fair Use

Heath Miller of the Pittsburgh Steelers makes a reception at the 1-yard line while defended by Brandon Flowers of the San Diego Chargers at Monday's game in San Diego, Calif.
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Heath Miller of the Pittsburgh Steelers makes a reception at the 1-yard line while defended by Brandon Flowers of the San Diego Chargers at Monday’s game in San Diego, Calif. Donald Miralle/Donald Miralle/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Donald Miralle/Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Football’s popularity has made it among one of the most lucrative business franchises. So it should come as no surprise that the NFL and other organizations holding the broadcasting rights to games felt very strongly about Deadspin and SB Nation, popular sports publications, attracting readers by posting highlights on Twitter.

What came next were complaints of copyright violations. Then came Twitter’s suspension of the accounts. Now comes the question: Do GIFs of sports highlights qualify as fair use?

Parker Higgins, director of copyright activism at civil liberties non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that may be the case.

“It’s a very small portion of the original,” he says. “It’s in a different context, because there’s no sound. It’s not surrounded by game footage. It does seem like some of these could be fair use.”

Fair use, or “fair dealing” as it’s known in other countries, allows people to reproduce copyrighted material for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching or research. The U.S. test for fair use involves four steps that evaluate:

  1. the purposes of the use (is it commercial?),
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work,
  3. how big of a portion is being reproduced,
  4. and how the reproduction will impact the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Disputed uses are often settled in court, and Twitter’s own policies say fair use cases are determined on a case-by-case basis. Its transparency reports show that in the majority of the cases, the company does remove material from its website.

In the instance of complaints from the NFL, the Southeastern Conference, the Big 12 Conference and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Deadspin’s Twitter account was quickly restored, while the SBNationGIF account remained suspended as of Tuesday evening.

Vox Media, which owns SB Nation, says it’s working with Twitter to resolve the issues. Vox’s statement also said the company always tries to “keep our use of unlicensed third party footage within the bounds of fair use.”

Both publications should have known better, says Forrester Research analyst (and football fan) Nate Elliott.

“I don’t know if it’s the exact wording, but if you’re like me, every Sunday at least twice you heard, ‘Images, pictures and descriptions may not be used without the express written consent of the National Football League,’ ” Elliot says.

Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, says the company does not comment on individual accounts, though he shared links to the individual complaints involved, which have now been posted in the Chilling Effects database that tracks requests to remove online content.

The media companies theoretically could dispute the sports organizations’ complaints. Deadspin’s owners at Gawker Media don’t plan to sue the NFL “at this time,” says acting executive editor John Cook, and adds:

“But its contempt for its fans—and Twitter’s contempt for its users—is baffling to us.”

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Health October 13, 2015

Video Of Michigan Man's Death In County Jail Draws FBI Scrutiny

Friends and family of David Stojcevski protest outside the Macomb County jail in Mount Clemens, Mich., on Oct. 10. Stojcevski died while he was being held in the jail because he was unable to pay $772 in driving fines. His mother, Dafinka (shown here with family friend Jason Howard), is suing for wrongful death and the FBI is conducting an investigation.
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Friends and family of David Stojcevski protest outside the Macomb County jail in Mount Clemens, Mich., on Oct. 10. Stojcevski died while he was being held in the jail because he was unable to pay $772 in driving fines. His mother, Dafinka (shown here with family friend Jason Howard), is suing for wrongful death and the FBI is conducting an investigation. Sarah Cwiek/Michigan Radio hide caption

itoggle caption Sarah Cwiek/Michigan Radio

The FBI is investigating the death last year of a 32-year-old man in a Michigan jail.

In March 2014, David Stojcevski was sentenced to 30 days in the Macomb County jail.

He died there a little more than two weeks later — despite being under 24-hour video monitoring for most of that time.

That video footage captured nearly every minute of the physical and mental breakdown preceding his death.

For Dafinka Stojcevski, David’s mother, the anger is still raw. She is seeking justice for her son.

“They need to be punished for everything what they do (to) my son,” she said during a protest on Oct. 10. “Shame on them!”

Friends, family and supporters protested outside the jail over the weekend. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit earlier this year.

Stojcevski’s official cause of death was acute drug withdrawal. He had struggled with opioid abuse. But it was withdrawal from benzodiazepines — drugs like Xanax and Klonopin — that killed him.

Stojcevski did have prescriptions for those drugs, as well as methadone. But according to his family, he never received the medications in jail, despite asking for them.

Family friend Jason Howard says it should have been obvious that Stojcevski was dying.

“He was in convulsions and, you know, in an observation cell, with a camera in it,” Howard says. “And they just sat back and watched, with medical staff right down the hall.”

Problem Of Denied Access To Medication

There are more than 200 hours of video from Stojcevski’s stay in the jail’s mental health unit.

Stojcevski suffered from seizures and dehydration. According to his family’s lawsuit, he lost 50 pounds.

But Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel insists the video made public last month doesn’t tell the whole story.

He calls allegations of wrongdoing “irresponsible.”

“It’s the actions of the officers that were working in that facility, that I know damn well did what they needed to do to care and tend to an individual,” Hackel says.

The county already concluded its own internal investigation and found no wrongdoing. The FBI is now reviewing the case.

County officials won’t comment on specifics, due to the pending lawsuit. So they won’t answer questions about whether Stojcevski was denied access to his medication.

But experts say that happens often in county jails.

“That’s a very common problem,” says Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, who researches prison oversight.

“When inmates come from the streets into the facilities, they often don’t have their medicines with them,” she says.

Deitch says it’s a big problem in a system where county jails are increasingly overwhelmed by inmates with substance abuse and mental health issues — often locked up for minor crimes.

“There are far too many people in these facilities that don’t need to be there,” she says.

How Poverty Plays A Role

And that’s another point of outrage in this case: the reason Stojcevski was in jail to begin with.

At his March 2014 district court hearing, Stojcevski faced a choice: Pay $772 in fines stemming from two driving infractions, or go to jail.

Michael Steinberg, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, says that’s a problem.

“When somebody’s too poor to pay a fine, they’re going to jail because of their indigency,” Steinberg says.

After Stojcevski went to jail, a judge approve his release to a community service and monitoring program. But Steinberg says that never happened. Emails between corrections officials show why.

“He was apparently somewhat catatonic when they went to meet with him in jail to work out some alternative,” he says.

There’s widespread consensus that county jails aren’t well-equipped to handle lots of people struggling with addiction and mental illness.

It’s just not often that the public can see the consequences of that struggle play out on video.

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