Nice job Variety.

Lawyers for the Catholic Church in Brazil are not happy with Columbia Pictures. The complaint: Columbia’s depiction of the destruction of Rio’s famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue in the studio’s 2009 disaster film “2012.”

Jesus, as it turns out, is copyrighted in Brazil.

THR, Esq. has the story:

Brazil uses a variation on U.S. copyright law, granting copyright to the author of a work until his death, then to his estate or heirs for another 70 years. Christ the Redeemer was created in 1931 by French artist Paul Landowski on commission from the Rio archdiocese. Landowski died in 1961, and the archdiocese says it holds copyright until 2032. …

Columbia, on the other hand, tells [THR, esq.] it did get a license, just not from the church.

“Acting on a good faith belief that the estate of the sculptor of the statue held the copyright, we sought and received their permission to use the image in the movie,” a studio rep told us. “We are currently in discussions with the archdiocese in hopes of reaching an agreement in this matter.”

Three Word Chant! dug up a fun bit punditry failure from a February, 1995 article in Newsweek by science writer Clifford Stoll.

The title of the story: “The Internet? Bah!”

Some highlights:

The truth in [sic] no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. …

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

More prognostication:

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping-just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete [sic]. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet-which there isn’t-the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Wow. Two typos and analysis that finds a way to make Bill Kristol look prescient by comparison. Unlike Kristol, though, Stoll at least seems to have realized the error of his thinking. According to his Wikipedia page, Stoll now makes a living selling glass Klein bottles on the Web.

H/T Unlikely Words

“South Park” fans may remember the episode shortly after 9/11, where Eric Cartman goes to Afghanistan and kills Osama Bin Laden Loony Tunes-style with a stick of Acme dynamite. Well, perhaps you missed it — but employees of the much reviled private security force Blackwater seem to have been pretty fond of it. Senate hearings are currently underway to deal with Blackwater contractors who illegally stole weapons intended for Afghan security forces, and signed for them under the name “Eric Cartman.”

From The Atlantic:

The Blackwater contractors–who were not licensed to carry arms in the country–apparently operated under the company name Paravant to escape scrutiny. They seem to have secured the weapons by checking them out under the name “Eric Cartman,” which will be familiar to viewers of the cartoon show South Park.

The heavily armed contractors did a great job of demonstrating why they were barred from carrying guns, shooting two civilians and, at one point, another Blackwater contractor.

Read more

Gordon Ramsay, the Simon Cowell of cooks, announced on Jimmy Kimmel last night that he’s running the LA Marathon next month. It’ll be hard to recognize him without him screaming.

Previously on FBLA:

Matt Stroud at True/Slant posted his emails with friend and colleague Steve Weinberg, the former IRE executive who edited a report funded by the Scientologists about the St. Petersburg Times’ investigations into the Scientologists. Weinberg gets to respond and add “nuance” to Howard Kurtz‘s WaPo article about his involvement in the investigative project.

The whole post is here. It’s interesting and journo cocktail party conversation worthy.

Then Stroud ends with:

If you’ve made it to this point, congrats: You’ve fallen about as far into the rabbit hole of journalism ethics as I’d recommend. But you’ve made it. So what do you think? Is it ok for veteran investigative reporters to write for the Scientologists? Or is working for an organization “so hostile to outside journalists” just not right?

We’ll really get to the bottom of this when we find out if the CoS publishes the investigation or not.

That’s what we’re interested in.

Previously on FBLA:

Thanks a lot, Seth MacFarlane.

Drop the Pun! Catchphrase Academy
Uploaded by barelydigital. – Classic TV and last night’s shows, online.

The latest offering from Barely Digital.

Personally, we thought the song was about us. But according to The Sun, Carly Simon‘s 38 year secret about who was the object of her classic ballad “You’re So Vain” is finally out. Some believe it’s her producer David Geffen.

She tipped the world off by saying his name backwards on a re-recording of the song for her upcoming ablum. She say’s “David” backwards? Only the most popular name in North America. So…yeah, mystery solved.