Random News Stories

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Leo Enticknap]

From Fox News:

Hong Kong authorities to investigate after massive screen falls during concert, injures dancers

A large video screen fell during boy band Mirror's concert at the Hong Kong's Coliseum on Thursday night

Hong Kong officials said Friday they would open an investigation into a concert accident where a giant LED video screen fell down onto the stage and injured two dancers.

Video clips from the Cantopop group Mirror concert Thursday night show a massive LED screen suspended above the stage crashing down, directly landing on one dancer before toppling over onto another as audience members scream in horror.

The injured performers were immediately sent to the Queen Elizabeth hospital.

"One of the injured is staying in the intensive care unit in serious condition and underwent an operation [Friday]. Accompanied by his family, the other injured person in stable condition was discharged this afternoon," the Hospital Authority said in a statement.

Local media reported that Chang Tsz-fung, 29, was released from hospital, while Mo Lee Kai-yin, 27, remained in the hospital in serious condition.

Kai-yin dislocated the third and fourth sections of his cervical vertebrae, leaving him unable to move. Doctors were able to stabilize him after an overnight procedure and surgery.

Authorities found that one of the two metal cords holding up the screen had snapped during the concert. An investigation is currently underway as experts attempt to figure out what exactly caused the suspension wires to fail.

The concert’s various contractors, including Engineering Impact and Hip Hing Loong, will be participating in the investigation with authorities.

Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Kevin Yeung told reporters Friday the government was "very concerned" about the incident and that an investigation would be conducted, likely over several weeks.

"We will do research to find out whether (the steel cable broke) due to an operational or material problem. It cannot currently be concluded at this stage," said Yeung, adding that the incident will affect "all future performances."

Authorities will also try to determine if any safety improvements are needed at other venues for upcoming performances to minimize the chances of such an incident occurring again, Yeung said.

Officers from the Labour Department have collected evidence from the venue and will work to determine who is responsible for the incident, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun said.

He said all activity under the remaining suspended screens at the venue will be halted, and organizers will work with government officials to determine how best to remove the suspended screens safely.

Hong Kong leader John Lee said Friday that authorities will "comprehensively investigate the incident" and review safety requirements for future performances, according to a government statement.

He also said the government would help family members of one of the injured dancers be able to travel from Canada to Hong Kong to see him.

Concert organizer MakerVille said in a statement it was "deeply saddened" over the injuries of two performers and that it would work with authorities in the probe.

"If we find anything suspicious, or if any person or unit is involved in misconduct, we will immediately report it to the police," the statement read.

The concert on Thursday was the fourth of 12 scheduled concerts by Mirror, with tens of thousands of fans having bought tickets.

The remaining eight shows have been canceled, but concert organizers announced that they will issue refunds to the fans.

Mirror, the 12-member band, has skyrocketed in popularity in Hong Kong and been credited with the revival of Cantopop.

Yikes! Hoping for a full and speedy recovery for the performers who were injured, and thankful that there were no fatalities.

If LED videowalls do seriously eat into the market share of projectors and (conventional) screens for cinema, the weight-related safety issues they bring with them will be significant. I have been involved in two installations, the most recent being last month: floor loading, torquing and anchoring of the frame components, and of course, seismic protection measures, were at the forefront of the projects, and the counties involved checked and inspected them very carefully. And those weren't even suspended from above! Hanging a display that size from wires strikes me as inherently dodgy. Quite large LED videowalls hung from the ceiling are now quite a common site in airports, but all the ones I've seen have been attached to horizontal RSJs or vertical steel shafts anchored directly to the ceiling frame; not hung from wires.

[Allan Young]

News is getting around a deer leapt through the windshield of a city bus here in Lawton.

News sure travels slowly down there! This was on CNN weeks ago.

[Bobby Henderson]

That would be like the Alan Ruck character in Speed where he's forwarding info over the phone from Keanu Reeves to his partner in the office (Jeff Daniels). Reeves sees the bomb wired to the bus undercarriage and says, "fuck me!" Ruck says over the phone, "oh darn."

[Frank Cox]

Not "Oh deer?"

[Bobby Henderson]

News is getting around a deer leapt through the windshield of a city bus here in Lawton. Spoiler alert: the deer was amazingly pretty much unharmed. The incident happened just a couple blocks from my workplace on the Southeast side of the city. The story has been picked up by national outlets today, simply because the surveillance video on the bus is pretty damned startling. I would have been shouting "holy shit" if I had been in the bus driver's position. Anyway, here is pretty good video from the City of Lawton about the incident. It includes more camera angles than what most networks are showing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHhqPslu7lM

[Martin McCaffery]

I can't seem to pin down the exact date of the news clip, but there's circumstantial evidence
that places it in the 1969-1971 time frame.
San Francisco Examiner - October 20, 1971
SFExaminer_10_20_1971.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Apparently the existance or future of Netflix will be determined this coming week. I know I wouldn't miss them at all...

[Frank Cox]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/skittl...aims-1.5989678

Skittles are toxic, U.S. lawsuit claims

Mars Inc has been sued by a consumer who claims that Skittles candies are unfit to eat because they contain a known toxin that the company had pledged six years ago to phase out.

In a proposed class action filed on Thursday in the Oakland, California federal court, Jenile Thames accused Mars of endangering unsuspecting Skittles eaters by using "heightened levels" of titanium dioxide, or TiO2, as a food additive.

The lawsuit also said titanium dioxide will be banned in the European Union next month after a food safety regulator there deemed it unsafe because of "genotoxicity," or the ability to change DNA.

"A reasonable consumer would expect that can be safely purchased and consumed as marketed and sold," the complaint said. "However, the products are not safe."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for fraud and violations of California consumer protection laws.

Mars did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.

The McLean, Virginia-based company, which is private, had pledged in February 2016 to remove artificial colours from its food products over the next five years.

In October 2016, it confirmed that titanium dioxide was among the colourants being removed, according to the non-profit Center for Food Safety, citing an email from Mars.

According to the lawsuit, titanium dioxide is used in paint, adhesives, plastics and roofing materials, and can cause DNA, brain and organ damage, and well as injuries in the liver and kidneys.

Thames, of San Leandro, California, said he bought Skittles at a local QuikStop in April, and would not have done so had he known their contents.

He said checking the label would not have helped because the ingredients on Skittles' bright-red packages are hard to read.

The case is Thames v Mars Inc, U.S. district court, Northern District of California, No. 22-04145.