Speaking of Tom Sachs, he’s a multi-media kinda pop-cultural artist, as evidenced by his collection of short films.

They look to be mostly stop-motion animation pieces with funky soundtracks/voiceovers attached. Sachs collaborated with the Neistat Brothers on these, and the influence definitely shows.

My favorites from this group are: “McDonald’s Teaser”, musically accompanied by the late Wesley Willis’ “Rock and Roll McDonald’s”; and “Bitches and Money”, a 1/25th-scale tour through a ghetto, backed appropriately by NWA’s “Gangsta Gangsta”.

Way to cash in, Moldy Peaches.

It was only a few months ago when you were compelled to reunite as part of the soundtrack for indieflick-hit Juno. Having gotten a taste of that — which included mass-audience gawking via “The View” — you’ve now lent your signature song, “Anyone Else But You”, to Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island for their latest TV commercial.

And probably worse, it’s not even the original song, but rather the melody with some reworked, marketing-specific lyrics grafted on. Selling out doesn’t get any more customized. I’d say the indie cred has flown right out the window…

I wish I could find the commercial online; I guess it’s too new to have been YouTubed.

From one of my most fave-o-reet episodes of “The Simpsons”, I present “Skinner & the Superintendent”, or (as I prefer) “Steamed Hams”:

And for good measure, the key exchange:

Superintendent Chalmers: I thought we were having steamed clams.
Seymour Skinner: Oh, no, I said steamed hams. That’s what I call hamburgers.
Superintendent Chalmers: You call hamburgers steamed hams?
Seymour Skinner: Yes, it’s a regional dialect.
Superintendent Chalmers: Uh-huh. What region?
Seymour Skinner: Uhh… Upstate New York.
Superintendent Chalmers: Really? Well, I’m from Utica, and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase ’steamed hams.’
Seymour Skinner: Oh, not in Utica. No, it’s an Albany expression.
Superintendent Chalmers: I see.
[Chalmers bites into a steamed ham.]
Superintendent Chalmers: You know, these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger.
Seymour Skinner: Oh ho ho, no. Patented Skinner burgers. Old family recipe.
Superintendent Chalmers: For steamed hams…
Seymour Skinner: Yes…
Superintendent Chalmers: Yes, and you call them steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviously grilled.

One last tidbit: Along with the obvious allusions to Pulp Fiction throughout, this episode also owes its title — “22 Short Films About Springfield” — to Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The title and structure of which, in turn, was inspired by the 32 pieces that comprise Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

For several years, the gaming industry has kept up a steady drumbeat about how, based on sales figures, videogames are now a more significant part of the entertainment-media world than the former king of the hill, movies.

Note that “based on sales figures” part, because it’s an obvious reason why the argument doesn’t hold up:

Software publisher Take-Two Interactive bandied the behemoth sales figures [of more than $500 million, for new release “Grand Theft Auto IV”] on Wednesday, days after “Iron Man” vaunted an unexpectedly huge opening weekend box office [of $200 million]. The eye-popping digits left many wondering how such a blockbuster could be so soundly trounced by a controverisal video game.

The simple answer: “GTA IV” costs more to buy…

The standard edition of “GTA IV” is $59.99, while a special edition goes for $89.99 and comes with a soundtrack, art book, duffel bag and safety deposit box. Either way, every time a copy of the game is rung up, what’s added to the week’s tally is significantly more than the $7 average ticket price to see a movie in the U.S.

It’s not hard to figure it out: If Product A costs some nine times more than Product B, naturally a dollar-for-dollar comparison will favor the higher-ticket product, even when unit sales are much lower. Bottom line, there are a lot fewer people buying game discs than there are people waiting in lines outside multiplexes. And as far as what influences the popular consciousness, that’s what counts — movies trump videogames in everyday parlance.

This would seem to be intuitive — except somehow, it’s not. I guess it’s fueled by gamer fervor more than anything else — a desire to deflect the persistent characterization of gaming (especially console videogames) as strictly niche. When Take-Two announced the $500 million-plus opening-week sales of “GTA IV”, it made sure to couch it in language that stacked it against other media: “Breaks Entertainment Launch Records” according to the headline. That’s technically true, and because three-quarters of news-scanners won’t read any further for clarification, a meme is born that videogames have gotten “bigger” than movies and everything else — whatever that means.

In any case, I give AP reporter Derrik J. Lang some credit for bothering to dissect the obvious. It won’t dispel the common misconceptions floating around, but at least it’s out there for the record.

It’s official: Isabella Rossellini has gone crazy.

Or “buggy”, which would be more in line with the theme behind her “Green Porno” series of insect-sex (”insext”?) short films for Sundance Channel. I mean, it’s one thing to produce nature documentaries on the same reproductive topic — that give it a veneer of scientificness. But to (sorta) dress up as a spider, a dragonfly, etc. and act out the wild wiggling? Cute, but way out there, man.

Although, maybe she’s on the crest of a trend. Perhaps Jerry Seinfeld cracked open the door with Bee Movie, with everyone else just now catching on.

The National Hockey League Eastern Conference Final begins tomorrow night between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers. This all-Pennsylvania playoff series has the Keystone State all geeked up, as fans from each city are plotting public-monument desecrations in the rival towns.

Top target in Philly: The statue of Rocky.

The attack may have already happened overnight - just as a similar outrage was apparently committed by Montreal Canadien fans during the previous hockey series.

The evidence: On the pavement in front of the bronze Italian Stallion lay a black No. 87 Sidney Crosby jersey around 9:30 this morning. The sleeves appeared to have been cut off, perhaps to facilitate draping it over Rocky.

In retaliation, Brotherly Lovers are putting the cross-state call out:

I am recruiting a Philly native and loyal Flyers fan that is living in Pittsburgh to place a Flyers jersey on a significant landmark in Pittsburgh (panther statue on Pitt campus, in front of Mellon Arena or anything you can think of) and send me a photo of it to submit to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It’s all pretty childish, but hey, both cities are thirsting for a championship. Nice to see some passion for the postseason. And at this rate, I think Pennsylvania is giving Minnesota a run for its money for that “State of Hockey” moniker.

It’s a bit of a hike, but I’ll have to keep Larry’s Barber Shop, on the northern fringe of Hell’s Kitchen, in mind for my next haircut. Not only will I get a new ‘do, I’ll also get a chance to watch a random mobster movie while I wait.

From the mirrored reflections of the talking heads in his tiny shop on 57th Street near 10th Avenue in Manhattan, [shop owner Larry] Babizhaev receives political opinions, financial advice, sports commentary and other news between haircut and tip.

Along the way, some of his customers started recommending films like “The Godfather,” “Goodfellas” and “A Bronx Tale.” “I just got hooked,” Mr. Babizhaev said.

He began spending a good portion of his tips on mob movies and “anything to do with gangsters.”

Providing a DVD to watch is definitely preferable to some inane snip-snip chit-chat. Only snag: I’m not sure I’d be satisfied watching just a snippet of a movie. But then, I wouldn’t want to spend two hours in a barber shop just to see the complete “Pope of Greenwich Village”, either.

Another example of the incestuous ideamill that makes up Hollywood:

- “The Return of Jezebel James” was a recent sitcom on FOX about a straitlaced professional woman (Parker Posey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Lauren Ambrose), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

- Baby Mama is a current major motion picture release about a straitlaced professional woman (Tina Fey) who wants a baby, but can’t conceive on her own. So she enlists a surrogate mother (Amy Poehler), who happens to be a scatter-shot, roughneck polar opposite. Odd-couple wackiness ensues!

Yep, same difference. The only serious divergence I can see is that the sitcom’s characters were sisters, while the movie’s characters were brought-together strangers. Otherwise, this was cross-pollination.

The end results: “Jezebel James” was a flop, lasting only three episodes on TV, while Baby Mama debuted at No. 1 at last week’s box office (although a relatively weak one, banking only $17.4 million).

There may be something behind the principal actors’ displacement into different media: Posey and Ambrose are accomplished indie-movie stars, while Fey and Poehler are best known from “Saturday Night Live”. The SNL connection likely had a lot to do with the movie’s success, as the duo there was basically carrying over their “Weekend Update” chemistry to a big-screen milieu.

With the appeal of first-release theatrical movies waning — as audiences know the cable and DVD release for the same flick will follow in mere weeks — more cineplexes are using their screens and seats for simulcasting live sports matches, concerts and other big-ticket events as a way to expand both revenue streams and audience access.

Why has this idea, which clearly fills a need and seems like a natural fit for moviehouses’ small-crowd configurations, not caught on? Probably because the words “movie” and “theater” are too-closely wed:

Marketing is the biggest puzzle that operators need to figure out, said Jeffrey B. Logsdon, an entertainment analyst at BMO Capital Markets. Trying to contain costs, most have relied on advertising on their Web sites and in movie listings. Still, most people do not think to seek this kind of content at the movies, he said.

Consumer psychology, Mr. Logsdon says, plays as big a role in the shift as economics. Operators want people to think of theaters as vibrant, busy places. But when weekends account for 70 percent of movie ticket sales, multiplex parking lots spend a lot of time sitting empty.

“At the movies” is the heart of the problem. Nobody considers their town or neighborhood theaters as anything other than a place to catch a movie. Decades of reinforcing this linkage served the movie business well, before box-office declines became the norm in recent years. Now, that extreme tailoring by exhibitors to just one content stream — movies — is the classic situation of putting all the eggs in one basket, and sinking or swimming correspondingly.

It’s not out of the question for theaters to remake themselves into multiple-offering venues. After all, motion picture showings started in old vaudeville theaters that were dominated by live entertainment. Even well after films established themselves in “movie palaces”, they often shared space with other modes of entertainment. A congregation of seating is inherently flexible, and that silver screen can be rigged to show just about anything.

The trick is convincing people that there’s enough of a tradeoff between watching at home, on a smaller but cozier home theater, and sharing a gigantic screen and surround-sound experience with dozens of strangers. The event will go a long way toward selling the experience.

The key is in playing with the definition of “live”. Live simulcasts certainly don’t have the same vibe, but the exclusivity of the situation would still count for something. It certainly needs some marketing finesse — consumers resent an obvious attempt to be suckered into a “live” event when it’s really video. But presented for what it is, with the benefits emphasized, it can be sold.

What does recession, large-scale financial institutional collapse and currency devaluation bring to mind?

Of course: Planet of the Apes, where a hierarchy of primate greed is to blame for our fiscal woes.

Giant Apes - Capitalists ruling the Jungle through asset management

Orangutans - Puppet leaders in power positions, yet controlled by Apes

Gorillas - Enforcers whose brute strength protects the Apes power

Chimpanzees - Masses of workers manipulated like the Humanoids

Flying Monkeys - New high-tech species immigrated from Land of Oz

Even though MarketWatch columnist Paul B. Farrell goes way overboard with the damn-dirty-apes motif, he does present a crazy-quilt cast that somehow makes sense. Take, for example, the Wall Street equivalents for one simian class:

Orangutans: Puppet Leaders

8. Politicians, Congress & Executive. Follow lobbyists’ orders; love perks, status

9. Securities and Exchange Commission. Always favors industry over investors

10. Mutual fund directors. Paid over $250,000 annually, favor their insiders

I guess the appropriate d’enouement to this monkey business will be the realization that this was our planet all along. You maniacs, you blew it all up!

Funny thing about Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Dan Boyle and the freshly-inked contract that keeps him off the trade and free agent market:

TSN has learned that the deal will pay Boyle $6.66 million per year for six years [for a total of $40 million].

Sure, business is business, but that 6-6-6 per year is unusually satanic.

What’s more, the incoming new owner of the Lightning happens to be one Oren Koules, Hollywood producer best known for the Saw horror-flick franchise. It’s been acknowledged that Koules has been given the greenlight to make personnel decisions ahead of officially closing on the sale, so Boyle’s contract doubtless had his final approval.

So, did Koules engineer that mark-of-the-beast dollar figure, as some sort of subtle movie-marketing tie-in? Will every Lightning contract during the Koules era have some nefarious subtext attached to it?

I’m happy for Boyle’s bank account, but scared for his soul.

The lure of the fairway seems to be losing its appeal, as fewer and fewer people are playing golf these days:

The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third.

The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.

The suspected problem is the time commitment: Four hours to get in 18 holes, which is a lot to squeeze out of a weekend these days. I admit, a big reason why I never showed much interest in the game was because I could think of better ways to waste my leisure time; a couple of golf-obsessed friends back in the day certainly seemed to practically live on the course on Saturdays and Sundays.

I have an innovative solution to draw the crowds: Screenings of Caddyshack at the 18th hole! That’s major motivation for plowing through a full course, I’d say.

I guess the well of book properties is in danger of drying up, because Hollywood is raiding the toystore for movie source material:

Universal Pictures has announced a six-year partnership with Hasbro to produce at least four feature films based on branded properties.

The properties include “Monopoly,” “Candy Land,” “Clue,” “Ouija,” “Battleship,” “Magic, The Gathering” and “Stretch Armstrong.”

Last I checked, traditional board games are on the decline, so this is something of a nostalgia play. Of course, these games are getting second lives in computer-game form, so there’s still some relevance there. And undoubtedly, the backstory behind each game’s premise brings a built-in cinematic plot synopsis. (Not sure what Stretch Armstrong is doing in that group, but a Plastic Man knockoff action figure has entertainment potential all its own.)

I’ll point out that “Clue” already got the movie treatment, more than 20 years ago. I guess it took that long for the potential of the rest of the tabletop roster to shine through.

Apparently, the intelligentsia at the Grey Lady just got wind of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and conclude that this upcoming movie represents a cultural barometer regarding attitudes toward America’s most notorious prison.

But Guantánamo is no longer just a naval station or even just a detention center. It is an idea in worldwide culture — in more than 20 books and half a dozen movies and plays, with more coming out every month.

It has become shorthand for hopeless imprisonment and sweltering isolation. “The strange new Alcatraz,” one writer calls it, “the gulag of our times.”

I don’t think the Harold and Kumar treatment is the tipping point in making Guantánamo a casual reference. The easy transfer of the militaryspeak “Gitmo” nickname into mainstream usage probably started the process, but the repetitive mention of the name during War of Terror coverage cemented it as common feature on the current-affairs landscape. A comedic turn is just another step in the progression of developing the social mindset.

Besides, in the case of this laff-fest sequel, the particulars of the situation come together to give a plausibility to the farce. Let’s face it, dark-skinned Harold and Kumar being tagged as Gitmo-level terrorists makes sense. But, say, Larry the Cable Guy getting shipped there in a similar premise? I wouldn’t put it past some Hollywood hack to try it, but any humor attempt would draw on different sensibilities.

It’s a veritable ‘roid rage on Capitol Hill, as the crusade against performance-enhancement drugs in the sports world trots toward the horseracing circuit.

And just to underline that they’re not going to pee-test the jockeys, this excellent headline tells it all:

They Juice Horses, Don’t They?

In keeping with the cinematic reference, I would have also accepted, “They Shoot Up Horses, Don’t They?”. The classics never die.

The future is arriving for Los Angeles, in the form of those skyscraper-sized video ads that opened the dystopian cityscape of Blade Runner. Inspired by that very movie, businessman Sonny Astani is planning to include such ads on a 33-story condo he’s building in the city’s downtown.

If it comes off, it would be just the tip of the iceberg:

Astani’s plan seeks the creation of a special district where at least two high-rises could be partly covered with rows of tiny panels embedded with LEDs, or light-emitting diodes — a concept viewed by some at City Hall as the next frontier in outdoor advertising.

Although office towers in Los Angeles already have “supergraphics” — enormous vinyl sheets stretched across one side of a building — those images are static. Should Astani succeed, sign companies looking to show animated advertising could view the city’s high-rises as enormous blank canvases.

What could derail this plan for in-motion, larger-than-life advertising? Nothing, unless that alleged product-placement curse from the film is actually true:

Someone once noticed that a number of the companies whose logos appeared in BR had financial difficulties after the film was released:

- Atari had 70% of the home console market in 1982, but faced losses of over $2 million in the first quarter of 1991.

- Bell Telephone lost its monopoly in 1982.

- Pan-Am Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection in 1991.

- Coca-Cola released their much-hyped “new formula” New Coke, resulting in losses of millions of dollars. (It is interesting to note that since then, the Coca-Cola company has seen the biggest growth of any American company in history.)

- Cusinart filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1989.

Not that all of the above actually appeared on those massive cinematic adscapes. Just the same, Astani’s gotta hope none of his prospective advertisers run across the list.

Yes, FDA endorsement of foodstuffs from cloned livestock mirrors shifting public acceptance of eating “frankenfood”.

But I can’t say I’m all that interested in that. What I was really interested in was pouncing on this opportunity for a most apropos headline pun, riffed off Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

I feel better now.

Funny. When I went to see Waitress, Knocked Up, and Juno — all in theaters — a common thought entered my head with each viewing: Given the awkward circumstances the pregnancies of each film’s main characters, why didn’t they get abortions?

And I wasn’t the only one, either.

Maybe billionaire Philip Anschutz’s aspirations for conservative-Christian moviegoing fare had taken root with implicitly pro-life messaging in feature films? Alas, it doesn’t appear that Anschutz had a hand in producing any of the above flicks.

Regardless, I realized my pondering didn’t make much sense, because none of the movies would have had much of a plot had the pregnancies been terminated. Indeed, Hollywood’s dive into babymaking follows a tradition of pushing a storytelling device, rather than a political agenda:

In fact, film and TV feature a lot more unlikely pregnancies — would a typical mainstream single Manhattan career gal like Friends’ Rachel Green really have carried that baby to term? — than terminated ones. There’s a reason that the abortions in Maude or Fast Times at Ridgemont High stand out: They were so unusual…

Just as we suspend disbelief about an action hero’s physical abilities in order to script an awesome chase sequence, so too do we suspend disbelief about the likely family-planning decisions of Katherine Heigl’s twentysomething E! reporter (or Meredith Baxter Birney as a fortysomething ex-hippie attorney) in the name of on-screen excitement.

Against this full-terming backdrop, we have to consider its real-life manifestation, in the form of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy. Based on the Spears family track record in child-rearing, I’d say Hollywood’s more pertinent duty would be to ease off on providing inspiration for ill-equipped mothers-to-be.

I came across this little gem of a short film called “My Name Is Lisa” recently:

What’s so engaging about this Shelton Films production is the build-up: It starts off with all the looks of a typically nondescript YouTube jokey video log, but unfolds with deliberate purpose into a deeper and touching dramatic vignette.

It’s certainly not perfect. The music, while serving as a very useful indicator of the shifting timbre of the story, eventually becomes just a bit overbearing by film’s end. The acting is decent, but wouldn’t win any Oscar nods. But it all works well enough to earn a third-place showing in a recent YouTube Project: Direct competition.

One final tidbit: That passage that Lisa is reading at the end? It’s from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”, which significance is hinted at earlier in the film.

Movie posters for current release I Am Legend and upcoming flick Cloverfield are plastered all over the Big Apple, and in both cases, the dominating visuals consist of recognizable New York City landmarks (i.e., the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge) reduced to ruins.

With this in mind, the question is asked: Why is NYC a frequent target for Hollywood-conjured destruction?

The basic answer is that the City is so big and prominent that it serves as a “global shorthand” for conveying apocalyptic impact:

James Sanders, the author of “Celluloid Skyline,” about the history of New York in movies, ascribed the resonance of disaster scenes involving New York to the prospects for special-effects shock. “What would be the point of showing a demolished suburban street? You’d get the point but it just wouldn’t have the punch. You take the most familiar, iconic symbol of civic society in the world — a big city, and for Americans, that’s New York — and that’s where disaster is going to be the most powerful.” He added that New York serves as a yardstick — what architects would call a scale — that illustrates the magnitude for a disaster.

In other words, what would be the point of showing an already flattened-out landscape being destructively flattened? The subtext being that it’s already a wasteland — which might sound like an urban-elitist attitude, and yet that’s how viewers/readers around the world interpret the landscape in this context, by reduction if nothing else. When big buildings fall down, it’s more resonate than if, say, a strip mall or farmhouse gets wasted.

Then again, maybe that’s why those who don’t dwell within urban canyons enjoy watching the big-screen mayhem:

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who keeps himself busy by, among other things, reviewing movies for several local newspapers in Manhattan, attributed the persistence of the destruction theme to “edifice envy.”

“They want to see our skyscrapers destroyed because they are envious of them,” Mr. Koch said in a phone interview. Asked whom he was referring to, he said, “‘They’ is the rest of the country.”

But fair’s fair: It’s certainly possible to get across massive disaster on a suburban/exurban scale. Witness this current trailer for the “BlackSite: Area 51″ videogame:

Is this a divide amongst visual mediums: Movies are better at vertical, videogames at linear/horizontal? Either way, plenty of mayhem to go around.

It’s a bit heavy on the agency jargon, but “A Few Good Creative Men” is a most apropos application of the parody-like quality of working within the belly of the ad-industry beast:

Along with the “bigger logo” quip, I really like that “sleeps under the blanket of creativity that I provide” line.

And I can’t think of a more suitable scene for skewering than this one from A Few Good Men. As iconic as it’s become, I actually find it almost comical — I just can’t buy that a political animal like that would lose his cool in such an incriminating way, extreme hubris or not. I’ve never been able to watch the entire movie more than the one viewing I took in.