Disney gets risqué with Unrated release of ‘Badder Santa’

May 30th, 2007

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Disney Home Entertainment will be releasing an unrated cut of ‘Bad Santa’ tentative titled ‘Badder Santa: Unrated Edition’ on Blu-Ray, High-Def Digest reports. While the release date is set for November 20th, the raunchy details of the disc’s contents are still under wraps. With the former Buena Vista Units all now bearing the Disney moniker, Dimension no longer a Disney Label, and Touchstone long buried, Disney doesn’t really have an appropriate label for gross-out comedy anymore.

To date, all versions of ‘Bad Santa’ have sold more than 1.38 million units on DVD, according to Nielsen Videoscan.

Best Buy partners with the Rolling Stones on DVD Exclusive

May 30th, 2007
Best Buy Logo The Rolling Stones and Best Buy have partnered on a new exclusive DVD Release for the second time in four years, according to Businesswire. Called The Biggest Bang, this four DVD set of the Stones’ recent record-breaking tour will be available starting June 12 for $29.99 exclusively at Best Buy’s retail and online stores. The Biggest Bang features duets with Dave Matthews, Bonnie Raitt and Eddie Vedder, among others, and features over 50 songs and footage from around the world. Previously, Best Buy released Four Flicks, a 19-times platinum Rolling Stones set that remains the number one selling concert DVD in U.S. history according to Nielsen Soundscan.

The release comes at the height of the “retail exclusive” trend. With price search engines on the web leveling the playing field, retailers have been pressured to come up with limited, exclusive versions or outright exclusive releases to help drive traffic to lagging retailers. In the past year, Best Buy has been at the forefront with home entertainment exclusives, with some notable releases being The Office Severance Package, a Scrubs bonus DVD, and a two week Apple iTV exclusive. While a boon for retailers, these special releases are making DVD distributors work harder (and less profitably) for what amounts to similar buying levels from DVD’s sales peak in 2005. That being said, the collaborative nature of these projects has strengthened the distributor-buyer relationship, and has helped to make distributors become more customer-centric.

Slew of new postings just added to the Jobs page

May 30th, 2007

Slew of new postings just added to the Jobs page

Annoying Foods

May 30th, 2007

Cutesy food caricatures stalk and harass a teenage boy.

Runtime: 45 sec

Press release of the week

May 30th, 2007

MTV and Yahoo have teamed up with reality-television pimp Mark Burnett to introduce a new spot to the MTV Movie Awards: a user-generated category for best movie spoof. 400 submissions have been whittled down to five finalists that Christina Norman, MTV's president, is really psyched about. See, despite what Sarah Silverman thinks, it's all about the fans at the MTV Movie Awards. President Norman explains, “It's their show and not only are we giving them a voice to celebrate their favorite movies, stars and moments, but we are truly making them the stars of the show." So we proles are running the asylum this year. Awesome. Later today, I'll watch the finalists.

Harley-Davidson: Baby

May 30th, 2007

This little guy can't fall asleep without the sweet growl of a Harley. Perhaps it reminds him of how he was conceived.

Runtime: 35 sec

Anthony Hurd

May 30th, 2007

Anthony Hurd

Housekeeping

May 30th, 2007

A few things around the site to mention and discuss:

Chinese in the feeds

This was my bad. I misconfigured a plug-in, and it started to grab some random Chinese Twitter feed. I’m going to be traveling a lot in July, well outside of traditional internet access, so I’ll be needing to use an alternative method (like Twitter) to post from the field. I’m still debating whether it’s best to generate traditional posts, or just a persistent header (like I did for Sundance).

Follow-Up Email plugin

AndrewJS wrote in about troubles with this plug-in:

Your WP plugin that emails people regarding new comments for certain articles seems to be overly ambitious lately. I left a comment on your Finale PDF thread and checked that box, but am receiving follow up emails for several other articles also that I never subscribed to. I rarely leave comments on your site, and I checked those other articles just to make sure I hadn’t commented on them. This included the Marvel thread and something about a Screenwriter’s Dinner, and one or two others. They all poured in overnight at once. Seems a bit odd.

Is anybody else having troubles with this plug-in? Is anyone else using it? I’m happy to troubleshoot it if people are finding it useful, but if not, the simplest solution would just be to remove it.

Live preview on comments

Some readers are having trouble with the live previews on the comments. If you’re one of them, shoot me an email at ask@johnaugust.com. Be sure to include which browser you’re using (e.g. Internet Explorer). Some readers have had success by breaking long comments into shorter sections. That really shouldn’t matter, but if it works, go for it.

Savings Plan

May 30th, 2007

A savings plan that allows you to get whatever you want whenever you want, smells like a gold digger alright!

Runtime: 45 sec

Go Home

May 30th, 2007

Two people cruise down the road riding on couches in this awesome stop motion animation by PES.

Runtime: 36 sec