I'd love to hear Clint Eastwood rap over this music.

Your video, clint eastwood, has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*showdown

that's my idea/suggestion.
i came up with it shortly after choggie's recent unplanned vacation, actually. i was going to toss it up as a sift talk when he came back, as a welcoming gift, but i chickened out because i have some weird aversion to sifttalk, which is why in a year and a half i've only posted three. yet clearly, i have no such aversion to run-on sentences. but, i digress.

choggie said something, right at the end, about discarding things because he felt the irresistible draw of the shiny red button.

i just never perceived it that way, so his saying that made it much clearer what the problem was. because dag made it pretty clear, i had thought, that discard wasn't for intended for subjective reasons. just dupes, deaths, porn, selflinks, etc, where there wasn't any wiggle room. wiggle room meant discuss first.

so, i thought, choggie wants a shiny red button, let's give it to him.
five bucks gets you one silver bullet.

it may or may not involve the ability to change one's prior vote. if not, we can still rely on those who haven't voted yet, and we're asking them to watch and give an up or down, don't just pass.

anyone who ponies up for the special one-time invoke, forces a *showdown and sends the sift to the top, even above promotes, until the agreed-upon clock time/vote count differential is met, and the sift either stays or gets sent to discardia.

so, just everyone give this comment an up or down, no hard feelings either way, as to whether or not you want a *showdown

[edit] kp - thank you for your honesty! srsly. i was expecting more downvotes.

Barbie the video game, that's what you play
Outrageous gas prices, that's what you pay
Clint Eastwood in the movie, go ahead make my day
Blankfist in your bed, that's why you're gay

AHHHHH, this thread's running dry!

I had the pleasure of seeing J. Michael Straczynski speak at the 2008 Comic-Con in San Diego, California. He had a lot of good things to say -- encouraging words about the writing biz, World War Z, and Changling to name a few -- but what really struck home was the ultimatum he gave about B5. Apparently he was approached to make another B5 movie with a $2 million budget, which he promptly turned down, telling them that since he owns the rights to the series, he wouldn't make another B5 movie unless it was a feature film backed by at least $25 million.

Considering several of his movies (not just Changling) are being picked up by Clint Eastwood, it's a very good chance we will see a B5 theatrical release in the future.

Jesse Ventura = Steven segal.
John Paul = Clint Eastwood (listen to him talk!)

Akira Kurosawa

Alfred Hitchcock

Steven Spielberg

Sergio Leone

Francis Ford Coppola

Orson Welles.

Clint Eastwood is a fantastic Director and while he made the greatest western of all time he does not have a prolific number of hits.

1. Welles
2. Coppola
3. Spielberg
4. Scorsese
5. Kubrick

Honorable Mention:

David Fincher
Brad Bird / Pixar team
Clint Eastwood
Quentin Tarantino

Top 13?

1 Kubrick
2 Lynch
3 Gilliam (pre Brothers Grimm)
4 Tarentino
5 Coens
6 Spielberg
7 PTA
8 Richard Linklater
9 Ridley Scott
10 Clint Eastwood
11 Segio Leone
12 Michel Gondry
13 Todd Solondz

I'm going to make my list more difficult (or maybe easier, depending on your point of view) by limiting myself to current, contemporary, living persons. This removes obvious picks like Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa and Hitchcock who would otherwise be at the top. Here's my list, in no particular order:

1) The Coens - plural I know, but you can't have one without the other. These brothers have produced masterpieces in every genre they've attempted. Crime, drama, comedy, mobsters, whatever. Always entertaining and very deserving of their recent Oscar.
2) Paul Thomas Anderson. A not terribly prolific director, but a thoughtful one. One of the few whose movies you must attend in the theatre simply because HE made it!
3) Wes Anderson- You can count on Wes for taking you to a place you've never been before, and no matter how fucked up your family may seem to you, the families portrayed in a Wes Anderson film are more disturbed and dysfunctional. Not to say that they're not loving and well-intentioned, just misguided.
4) Clint Eastwood- He has become a master of his craft. Few others will take the time to luxuriate in a scene like Eastwood. His long cuts and deliberate pacing show a respect for the intelligence and attention span of his audience.
5) Martin Scorsese- of all the great Directors born in the new Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1970s, only Scorsese remains at the top of his game. Others such as Spielberg, Lucas (ugh), Coppola, Friedkin etcetera have left their best work in the distant past.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Sylvestor Stallone, Bruce Willis, Ahhnold, movies' to 'Clint Eastwood, Sylvestor Stallone, Bruce Willis, Ahhnold, movies' - edited by oxdottir

Anything with Clint Eastwood = Automatic Upvote

At the end of the piece, the narrator quotes Judge Alex Kozinski of the Federal 9th Circuit Appellate Court. I've included the extended version of that quote here. His opinions on the "right of publicity" are best summed up in his White v. Samsung Electronics Dissent. The entire opinion is worth reading, but the critical summary is found in the first section which reads:

"Saddam Hussein wants to keep advertisers from using his picture in unflattering contexts. Clint Eastwood doesn't want tabloids to write about him. Rudolf Valentino's heirs want to control his film biography. The Girl Scouts don't want their image soiled by association with certain activities. George Lucas wants to keep Strategic Defense Initiative fans from calling it "Star Wars." Pepsico doesn't want singers to use the word "Pepsi" in their songs. Guy Lombardo wants an exclusive property right to ads that show big bands playing on New Year's Eve. Uri Geller thinks he should be paid for ads showing psychics bending metal through telekinesis. Paul Prudhomme, that household name, thinks the same about ads featuring corpulent bearded chefs. And scads of copyright holders see purple when their creations are made fun of.

Something very dangerous is going on here. Private property, including intellectual property, is essential to our way of life. It provides an incentive for investment and innovation; it stimulates the flourishing of our culture; it protects the moral entitlements of people to the fruits of their labors. But reducing too much to private property can be bad medicine. Private land, for instance, is far more useful if separated from other private land by public streets, roads and highways. Public parks, utility rights-of-way and sewers reduce the amount of land in private hands, but vastly enhance the value of the property that remains.

So too it is with intellectual property. Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture.

The panel's opinion is a classic case of overprotection. Concerned about what it sees as a wrong done to Vanna White, the panel majority erects a property right of remarkable and dangerous breadth: Under the majority's opinion, it's now a tort for advertisers to remind the public of a celebrity. Not to use a celebrity's name, voice, signature or likeness; not to imply the celebrity endorses a product; but simply to evoke the celebrity's image in the public's mind. This Orwellian notion withdraws far more from the public domain than prudence and common sense allow. It conflicts with the Copyright Act and the Copyright Clause. It raises serious First Amendment problems. It's bad law, and it deserves a long, hard second look."

-- Judge Alex Kozinski

It seems redundant for me to even mention how much he shamed Gere in this film. An established Hollywood star on screen with a kid picked out from thousands of auditions and the kid absolutely steals the show. Granted it's Gere, so it's not that difficult but still, hell of an introduction. For scene stealing it's up there with Kelly's Heroes (Don Sutherland shaming Clint Eastwood) and Line of Fire (John Malkovich shaming Eastwood again), although they win out because they steal the film from a damn good actor, not Richard "look down, hand on forehead, shake head gently, pick up $15m cheque"* Gere.

* Okay, you got me, that's not really his middle name. His real middle name is Tiffany. Yes, Tiffany. Really. Really!

Should be in Ball-Flexin', though it is a toss-up. Is this a dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/Clint-Eastwood-as-Dirty-Harry-Do-you-feel-lucky-scene?


See also
http://www.videosift.com/video/Werner-Herzog-Hates-the-Artsy-Fartsy-Stuff