Random News Stories

[Carsten Kurz]

Okay, watching the video, these were moving screens. I mean, intentionally, moving screens. Usually, extra care is taken on performance stages if stuff is moved during performance above performers and audience, as massive trussing is impossible in these applications. Hard to say what went wrong here.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.yahoo.com/video/arcadia-...224024231.html

A registered nurse was arrested for allegedly firing several gunshots into her neighbor’s apartment over piano noise in Arcadia, California.

Pin Hsin Lin, who had been teaching piano lessons in her Sunset Boulevard apartment in Arcadia for nearly three years, was getting ready for a lesson when a bullet that was fired through her ceiling barely missed her.

Lin had initially heard loud bangs around noon on Aug. 1, which she assumed was her upstairs neighbor slamming doors. Lin realized the sounds were gunshots when the fourth loud noise came with a bullet through her ceiling, which struck a lamp on her piano.

“Suddenly, there’s a straight bullet,” Lin told ABC 7. “When I saw the hole, I was like, ‘This is a real gunshot!’ So I called police immediately.”

Lin also found another bullet hole in a cabinet in her kitchen. The bullet, which was fired while she was preparing food at noon, was stopped by a rice cooker on a top shelf. She believes her 39-year-old neighbor, Kathryn Pugh, was targeting her rather than aimlessly shooting through the floor.

Police said they found Pugh intoxicated and in possession of two legally registered guns in her apartment. She was arrested and charged with two counts of felony for discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling.

“We discovered she shot two rounds through a downstairs apartment unit,” Arcadia police Sgt. Ryan Mulhall reportedly said. “We found a bottle of tequila inside her house, and she was exhibiting signs and symptoms of being drunk.”

“It appears both the victim and suspect have an ongoing dispute over apartment-related issues,” police told Fox 11 in a statement. “It appears they were fired intentionally.”

Pugh, who moved in last year, had been complaining about the noise of her downstairs neighbor, according to Lin. Pugh is reportedly a Los Angeles registered nurse who was honored with a Daisy Award at Huntington Health in 2019. The award recognizes “excellence in clinical skills, caring and compassion.”

There were two more shots discovered through Pugh’s window and wall, according to the police. The bullets struck two other apartments, but there were no reported injuries.

Pugh’s bail was initially set at $250,000 before it was raised to $500,000. However, she was deemed a danger to the community by Judge Terry Lee Smerling, who then ordered her to be held without bail despite Pugh not having a criminal record.

“To us, that’s absolutely tragic,” Karla Sarabia, Pugh’s attorney, told ABC 7. “Conceivably until she goes to trial, so that could take months and in a serious case like this, maybe even longer. She’s going to lose her job, she’s going to lose her apartment, she’s going to lose her livelihood.”

“She has no priors, she’s a responsible person, she went to Berkeley, she got a scholarship, she got a 4.0 (grade point average),” Pugh’s mother Marie also told ABC 7. “She is one of the best people ever put on this Earth.”

Lin does not feel the same way. She believes Pugh will seek revenge if she returns to the apartment above her.

Pugh’s next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 16.

[Leo Enticknap]

LA County is one of the most restrictive in the nation for issuing firearm permits (even to keep one in your home, never mind a CCW), and so this lady would never have been issued one if there had been even a hint of trouble revealed by an extensive criminal record and general background check. I know somebody who was worried about increasing street crime and burglaries near her home in Huntington Park, applied for a permit to keep a gun in her home, and was refused: she was never allowed to know why, but suspected it was because she had been treated for mild depression after a divorce, and prescribed stuff for it for a few weeks 12 years earlier (that was the only reason she could think of).

Unless there is something we weren't told, holding her without bail seems extreme, especially given the fact that three out of four armed robbers who held up a jewelry store in Beverly Hills earlier this year were bailed. If she has no criminal record and no prior complaints of violent behavior, it would seem to me that revoking her firearm permit and confiscating her guns is all that is needed to prevent her from posing any danger to anyone else while she awaits trial.

And no way should anyone be playing an (acoustic) piano in a typical apartment complex. Played properly, an upright can easily produce 80-90dB, and even a baby grand significantly more.

[Leo Enticknap]

Source. My emphasis, obviously...

Virginia Patton, actress who played James Stewart’s sister-in-law in It’s a Wonderful Life – obituary

Virginia Patton, who has died aged 97, played Ruth Bailey, James Stewart’s sister-in-law, in Frank Capra’s uplifting 1946 Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life; she was the only member of the cast personally signed up by the director, her fellow actors all being on loan from other studios, and she was the last surviving adult actor from the cast.

It’s a Wonderful Life centres around Stewart’s George Bailey, who contemplates taking his own life after a financial disaster but is saved when the angel Clarence (Henry Travers) earns his wings by showing George how the world would have turned out if George had not been born.

Virginia Patton, a tall, blonde and dazzling young starlet, owed her part to a projectionist’s mistake. She had made a test reel for the producer-director George Stevens, but a few days later Capra was in the projection room to watch Stewart and Donna Reed, who played his wife Mary, in early scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life. The projectionist picked up the wrong can of film and unwittingly screened Virginia’s test, but Capra sat through it and decided she would be ideal for the part he had in mind.

The role was a small but crucial one. In a scene shot at a railway station in Pasadena, California, Ruth alights from a train as the new bride of George Bailey’s brother Harry (Todd Karns as the all-American war hero), and announces that her father has offered Harry a lucrative job elsewhere, crushing for ever George’s dreams of leaving small-town Bedford Falls.

Virginia Patton recalled her dilemma over how to handle the scene: “I was supposed to be eating buttered popcorn,” she told the National Catholic Register. “What am I going to do about my gloves? I had on a white hat and suit and gloves. Here I was, eating popcorn. I was in a quandary of what I was going to do.”

She adored working for Capra. “It was a camaraderie, but it was a business,” she said. “It was a wonderful atmosphere that some other directors didn’t produce.” She also told how Capra always had some kind of a message. “Because it was right after the war, he thought the whole world was in shambles … and he wanted to bring the world a message of peace and courage and to lift their spirits.”

She told her friend and correspondent Austin Mutti-Mewse how Jimmy Stewart approached his depiction of George Bailey with the attitude of someone who had seen war at first hand, as Stewart had as a bomber pilot flying missions to the continent from bases in Norfolk.

She noticed that he had lost weight and “when Jimmy as George cried, they were real tears… We all cried with him. George had been given another chance. Many of our boys hadn’t. [Jimmy] knew that. He’d seen that.”

It’s a Wonderful Life was not a box-office success on its release, particularly in the US; but affection for it blossomed as repeat showings became a fixture of Christmas television. Virginia Patton joked that she had been “in more homes than Santa Claus”. But Virginia Patton knew there was something special about the film while she was working on it.

“People of all generations can still identify with Jimmy Stewart’s character,” she said in 2011. “I felt then, and still do, that in times of austerity one’s guardian angel can work wonders for the soul. Therapists have often suggested that It’s a Wonderful Life can beat low-level depression. How many movies can [be credited with] helping those in pain and suffering?”

In 1995 It’s a Wonderful Life was one of 45 films chosen by the Vatican to commemorate the 100th anniversary of filmmaking.

Virginia Patton’s role, however, was not quite as chaste as she had been promised. As she put it: “I was a teenager playing a very sophisticated woman, or so I thought.” These contrasting features are revealed when James Stewart kisses her in the film, although Capra had told her that this would not happen.

Virginia Ann Marie Patton was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 25 1925, the daughter of Donald Patton and his wife Marie, née Cain; she was the niece of George S Patton, the American general. Her father’s work took the family to Portland, Oregon, where she was educated at Jefferson High School before moving to California.

“I wanted to make it in Hollywood,” she said. “I could think of nothing else. So when I arrived at Union Station and walked through the vast arrival halls and saw palm trees outlined beautiful by the Californian sunshine, I knew I had arrived at my Mecca. When I arrived on Hollywood Boulevard however, I have to admit, my slight disappointment at seeing Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Hedy Lamarr and others sauntering along the sidewalk.”

She studied acting at the University of Southern California with William C DeMille, brother of Cecil B DeMille, and soon secured several minor film roles with Warner Brothers. One of the stars she took a shine to was Bette Davis, recalling how : “We had already met on the set of [the all-star morale-booster] Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). When we worked again together in Old Acquaintance [also 1943], in which I played a sweet natured college girl called Maud, she made a point of being nice to me.”

After It’s a Wonderful Life, Virginia Patton made four more films, including the Ku Klux Klan exposé The Burning Cross (1947), the story of a war veteran who struggles to adjust to civilian life. But the previous year Warner Bros had released her from her contract, and without the backing of a big studio her career started to founder.

She retired from acting in 1949 to marry Cruse Moss, an American Motors executive. Although Capra urged her to think twice about abandoning her acting career, she had no regrets and “couldn’t see me doing that for my life.”

The couple settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she ran an investment business. In 1984 they narrowly escaped drowning on board a Scandinavian Airlines flight that overshot the runway at JFK airport, New York, and plunged into swampy water. “I can still taste Jamaica Bay,” she said a few days later.

Moss died in 2018; they had three children.

Virginia Patton, born June 25 1925, died August 18 2022.

[Frank Cox]

It's a Wonderful Life was a flop on its release but then it became public domain in 1974 so many television stations started airing it because it was free content.

Then in 1993 it was declared to no longer be public domain and Republic Pictures started demanding royalties.

[Leo Enticknap]

There is a little more to it than that.

As I understand it, clerical errors resulted in the copyright of the film itself not being renewed on time, and lapsing into the public domain in 1974. However, the novel from which the screenplay was adapted was kept in copyright, and the adaptation rights in perpetuity had been sold to Republic. In 1993, Republic relied on a SCOTUS decision from a few years earlier regarding adaptation rights to reassert ownership of the movie on this basis. This effectively stopped the "free" TV broadcasts, but did little to stop sales on VHS, non-theatrical distribution on 16mm, etc. etc.

Then Republic went one step further, by "restoring" the movie in the late '90s, which of course gave them copyright to the resulting "restoration" (if you've ever wondered why "restorations," director's cuts, versions with censored bits suddenly rediscovered, etc. etc. frequently appear of popular older movies, but which were never in danger from a preservation standpoint, the answer lies in the time-honored Wade Williams tactic of creating new versions of an old movie in order to keep it perennially in copyright). A couple more "restorations" have appeared since the start of the century.

[Jon Dent]

Clever. Sounds like a similar reason to why Sony consistently release Spiderman movies every few years: to keep the copyright from reverting to Marvel.

[Steve Guttag]

As I recall, another twist to the It's a Wonderful Life copyright had to do with the music that was used in the film still being in copyright on its own.

Me, personally, I think the copyright laws are onerous and should be revamped. 50-years should be sufficient...none of this life of the author plus 50 or, in Disney's case...forever. I would even allow a stretch for a personal copyright to last the life of the author and/or their spouse. But not for "for hire" copyrights. You should get 50-years to get what you can out of it. I have no problem with reissues getting their own copyright but that wouldn't stop the original from going into PD. That's my opinion on it, at least.

[Marcel Birgelen]

In my opinion, even 50 years is way too much for copyright. I'd say it should be the same as patents: You get 10 years with the option to renew 10 years. Those 20 years should be ample to cash in on any original work and will avoid the creative stranglehold many IP properties have found themselves in.

At least in the U.S. there used to be a central registry for copyrighted materials. I'd say that something like that should return, publicly available for everybody to query. You can only claim copyright when something has been officially registered. You can renew your registration once after 10 years, if you don't do so, it will enter the public domain. Requirement of registration and renewal will avoid the zombie state much of what has been created is in nowadays.

[Frank Cox]

I once saw a proposal for copyrights the fee would be based on the wheat and chessboard problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_...sboard_problem

There would be a registration fee every year. And that renewal fee would double every year.

Under that proposal you could keep your copyright for as long as you want, as long as you pay the annual fee.

$1 for the first year, $2 for the second year, $4 for the third year.... on the 20th year it would be just over one million dollars and the 25th year would be 33 million dollars.

Every copyright owner would then be able to select his own copyright term depending on how much value he believes it has. Copyright would be very affordable for the first several years when most stuff has the greatest value (just $32 for the fifth year, $1024 for the tenth year) and only the most exceptional stuff would continue to have its copyright renewed past 19 years when the fee would be just over a half-million dollars. Pretty much everything would be public domain by the 25th year.

[Marcel Birgelen]

$1 for the first year, $2 for the second year, $4 for the third year.... on the 20th year it would be just over one million dollars and the 25th year would be 33 million dollars.

Using that system, Disney would now need to pay 2^94 = $19,807,040,628,566,084,398,385,987,584.00 for Steamboat Willie this year... Yeah, I kind-a like the idea.

[Randy Stankey]

What about people like Van Gogh?

Legend has it that he only sold one painting during his lifetime, for a price of about $20.00 in today's money. It wasn't until ten years after his death (by suicide) that he became famous and, today, his paintings are among the most valuable in the world.

Without copyright protection, Van Gogh and his heirs (the brother who financially supported him for decades) never saw a penny of the multi-millions that his paintings are worth, today.

[Marcel Birgelen]

There isn't any copyright protection on any of the works of Van Gogh. Everybody is allowed to make a replica or use his original work as part of theirs, without the need to pay anybody. What you may not do is sell a replica as an original. It's only the original paintings that are worth millions of dollars, because, well, they're the original...

There still might be a copyright on a picture of a Van Gogh drawing though... If you make a photograph, you're the copyright holder of that photograph. For example, the Van Gogh museum allows pictures on their website to be used for non-profit purposes, but if you want to use them for commercial purposes, you need to license them. But if you head to the museum yourself and take a picture of one of his paintings, you don't owe anybody a dime for that photograph, it's yours and if the painting you photoghaphed is a Van Gogh, that picture is in the public domain.

[Randy Stankey]

Yes, virtually all of Van Gogh’s work is public domain. No question, there.

But Van Gogh never saw a penny of the millions or billions that his paintings are worth, today.
His brother supported him, financially, for decades. By rights, he should have been able to recover some or all of that expense by profiting from his brother’s work but, again, he saw little to none of the money he deserved.

This all happened because copyright laws were not mature enough (if they existed at all) to protect people like Van Gogh.

Nowadays, companies like Disney reap gazillions in profits while modern contemporaries of people like Van Gogh practically starve to death.

[Frank Cox]

The purpose of copyright is to encourage more of that creative stuff to be done.

Van Gogh wouldn't be creating new stuff after he died so copyright is ultimately irrelevant to his works. Or at least it should be irrelevant if copyright was rationally applied.

Whatever incentive he had at the time he created his paintings was enough of an inducement to get him to do it so anything more than that is self-evidently not needed.