On Tuesday, Samuel L. Jackson was interviewed on Fresh Air.

posted by steve at 6/30/2000 09:12:00 PM

Yesturday, Smith posted that there would be big news breaking. Today there were stories in the trades that Smith will direct and write a new Fletch film.
Now he's posted A Brief History of Fletch.

Inside.com has an article on how New Line is using the web to promote the Lord of the Rings movies. Peter Jackson who is directing the films wrote to Ain't It Cool News that he would answer questions. He answered questions back in August of 98, sent in an http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2629>update and answered more questions in January of last year.

New Line president Michael DeLucca who sometimes posts on fan sites and answers email wrote Why does everyone hate Hollywood for Roughcut's new http://www.roughcut.com/voices/index.htm>Voices Pro series.
posted by steve at 6/29/2000 12:37:00 PM

This week, Slate's Breakfast Table email exchange is between Marissa Bowe of Word and Ken Kurson of Green.

This week's This Modern World is on the death penalty and Al Gore. There also was an earlier TMW on the death penalty. Last November, the Atlantic Monthly had a story, The Wrong Man. There are links along the side to
previous converage of the death penalty. There also is a link to their excellent article from 1998 on the Prison-Industrial Complex which examines private prison in Texas on the second page.
posted by steve at 6/26/2000 12:59:00 PM

The Internet Is Alive With The Sound Of Books

Audiobooks, "the fastest-growing part of the book publishing industry," have made the smooth transition to the digital world, according to the July/August issue of Book (not yet available online). Credit is due to Donald Katz, the journalist who created Audible Inc. back in 1995. With fast turnaround -- a digital audiobook can be made available for download within a week after recording is completed -- and relatively low cost (Po Bronson's The Nudist on the Late Shift is $14.95 for the unabridged version), a large number of audiobooks are being made available in digital form only. Audible has struck deals with Amazon.com (which has a 5 percent stake in the company) and Random House, the better to ensure its place among competition that includes the MP3lit.com spinoff LoudBooks.com, which launches in August. Mary Beth Roche of Random House has high expectations for the new Random House Audible imprint, which will use the technology for breaking news as well as publishing books: "If we had been up and running when the Microsoft antitrust decision was issued," she says, "we could have asked five experts to write about it and have released it as an audiobook."

I wouldn't exactly say audio books have made a smooth transition to the digital world, but it is possible to download audio that is as good as what you'd hear on a cassette while it may be years before you can buy a electronic book reader that is anywhere near the quality of a paper book. And audio books are starting to be made available in digital form only. There probably won't be a large number until at least this fall. But it is nice to see someone noticed the piece. I'll link to the article when it goes online.


posted by steve at 6/26/2000 01:08:00 AM

The bottom line is that the “full and fair” access to the courts that Bush brags about is now a mirage...The closer you look at the Texas system, the more questions it raises about Bush’s leadership. One reason Texas has executed three times as many inmates as the next state (Virginia) is that Texas is one of only eight states that does not have a sentence of life in prison without parole. (Juries usually like that option.) And Texas is one of only a few states without a public-defender system. In 1995 Bush vetoed a bill that would have provided for one. He prefers a system where elected judges appoint lawyers who also often happen to be contributors to the judges’ campaigns. These defense attorneys have a strong financial incentive to plead out cases and otherwise help the prosecution.

Photojournalist Ken Light who deads the photojournalism program at UC Berkeley published a collection of photographs, Texas Death Row. There are photographs from it on the page for the book, more extensive photos and excerpts on Mother Jones and MSNBC has a feature with a slideshow of photos from the book
with recordings of comments from Light. The photo above is by Light.

Frontline has done a number of shows related to the death penalty with extensive websites. The Execution was about Clifford Boggess who was executed by Texas in 1998. The drawing above is by Boggess. The site includes an article on

Why texas is #1 in executions. Angel on Death Row is a profile of Sister Helen Prejean who wrote Dead Man Walking. And The Case for Innocence which examines the role of DNA evidence.
posted by steve at 6/24/2000 03:22:00 PM

"On Oct. 28, 1981, Mr. Gary Graham was found guilty of capital murder and later sentenced to death by a Harris County jury, which concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that he shot and killed Mr. Bobby Lambert during the course of a robbery...

Over the last 19 years, Mr. Graham's case has been reviewed more than 20 times by state and federal courts. Thirty-three judges have heard and found his numerous claims to be without merit.

In addition to the extensive due process provided Mr. Graham through the courts, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has thoroughly reviewed the record of this case as well as all new claims raised by Mr. Graham's lawyers. Today the Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to allow Mr. Graham's execution to go forward. I support the board's decision.

Mr. Graham has had full and fair access to state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

After considering all the facts, I am confident justice is being done. May God bless the victims, the families of the victims, and may God bless Mr. Graham."

DNA Frees Suspect in Md. Slaying. A moratorium on execuctions in Maryland has been proposed. Jesse Jackson Jr. has proposed a national moratorium.
The Washington Post has collected stories on the death penalty.

posted by steve at 6/22/2000 11:30:00 PM

The Chicago Tribune had a story this morning
which has links to their investigations of the death penalty in Texas and Illinois. The New York Times had a good story recently on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Pending Execution in Texas Spotlights a Powerful Board.

Salon has a commentary by Bruce Shapiro, The moral tipping point and an
interview with David Protess who has worked with his students to show that
inmates on death row in Illinois were wrongly convicted.

The Washington Post has an archive of their articles
on Graham dating back to 1993. A 1993 article says:

Lambert's widow [Lambert's murder is what Graham was convicted of], Loretta, also has written a letter to state officials,
saying, "I do not want the execution of a possibly innocent man on my
conscience."

"Meanwhile, Mr. Blair's attorneys have asked the federal court to subpoena
background information on Mr. Linch, whose analysis of hair and fiber
provided the key physical evidence against Mr. Blair.

Attorneys have asked to subpoena Mr. Linch's employment records during his
tenure as an analyst at SWIFS and hospital records that detail his
psychiatric treatment before trial.

The Dallas Morning News previously reported that Mr. Linch underwent
treatment for depression and alcoholism at the urging of his supervisors at
SWIFS, who said they considered him a danger to himself and possibly others.

After an initial exam at one hospital, Mr. Linch was handcuffed and
involuntarily admitted to a different psychiatric ward.

Although Mr. Linch acknowledged that he was released from the lockdown unit
at Doctors Hospital twice to testify in capital-murder trials, the Blair
trial was among the first in which he testified after his release."

D I T H E R A T I

see the digerati dither, daily

I WANNA NEW DRUG, ONE THAT DOWNLOADS WHAT IT SHOULD

"The key to piracy isn't to do a drug-war strategy, with brute
force out to crush the pirates. They key is to make a better drug."

MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson, on the music industry's need for an
MP3 strategy that doesn't make it nervous, wondering what to do --
one that makes me feel like I feel when I'm with you, Wired News,
20 June 2000

You can subscribe to get Ditherati daily by email or look at the archives.
posted by steve at 6/21/2000 10:18:00 PM

And watching it the other day, I certainly saw reflections of it in this era of Who Wants to
Be A Millionaire, Survivor and Angelyne (who has billboards with her picture all over LA and drives around in a pink corvette). A
review at epinions calls it the best early movie
on celebrity.

Next spring, an exhibit named after Gladys Glover will put billboards designed by artists around LA.
posted by steve at 6/20/2000 10:44:00 PM

You can subscribe to get it in PDF for each week (the PDF will be different in design from the website) and to get daily emails on each letter.

posted by steve at 6/20/2000 02:30:00 PM

Atom Films now has shorts from Aardman online including Creature Comforts which won an Oscar.
posted by steve at 6/20/2000 12:09:00 PM

They have a schedule online.
They will be showing several documentaries on Saturday and Sunday and the restored http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/6419/index.html>Rear Window on Sunday and Monday (http://www.newtimesla.com/issues/2000-01-27/film.html>Reappraising Rear Window is a review of the restored
film by Andy Klein). Other highlights include Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a comedy with Carol Lombard on late Friday/early saturday, Notorious (MI 2 uses the same plot), Vertigo and Psycho on Saturday, Strangers on a Train (both the US and British versions) on Sunday and Shadow of a Doubt (which is one of my favorites) and To Catch a Thief on Monday. 32 films will be shown during the festival.

This is an updated verson of an item I wrote for bud.com last year:

Alfred Hitchcock would have turned http://www.hitchcock100.com/>100 on Friday, August
13th, 1999. There was an exhibit
on him at MOMA in NYC. Their website includes a href=http://www.moma.org/filmvideo/hitchcock/lecture/index.html>
lecture he gave in NYC in 1939 and a lengthy http://www.moma.org/filmvideo/hitchcock/interview/index.html>interview
with him by Peter Bogdonavich from 1963. Indiana University Press will release
a DVD-ROM of Multimedia Hitchcock in December of 2000 (it was part of the MOMA exhibit).

Janet Leigh and Evan Hunter (screenwriter on the Birds who also
goes by the pen name Ed McBain) http://whyy.org/cgi-bin/FAshowretrieve.cgi?2684>talked about working with
Hitchcock
on Fresh Air. On WBUR's the Connection, Stanley Cavell,
professor of philosophy at Harvard University, and Terrence
Rafferty, film critic for GQ magazine, http://www.wbur.org/connection/1999/08/con0813.shtml>discussed Hitchcock's
work.
The Christian Science Monitor had
an href=http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/08/13/fp13s1-csm.shtml>article
by and audio interview with David
Sterritt on Hitchcock.

A DVD box set was released with special editions of href=http://www.bud.com/98/12/bitz/04.23.psycho.html>Psycho
and Vertigo (the documentary on the DVD
will be shown Saturday)
along with four episodes he directed
from http://timvp.com/hitch.html>Alfred Hitchcock Presents. http://www.criterionco.com/>Criterion released a special edition
of The 39 Steps on DVD. A 20 minute test reel Hitchcock shot for a http://member.aol.com/vistavsion/frenzy.html>film which never was made was
shown at the 1999 Venice Film Festival (the link is from the http://member.aol.com/vistavsion/>Hitchcock and his writers site).
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/104/northwest/index.html>North By Northwestis
being restored and will
be re-released in theaters.

For more information, there is the href=http://www.tdfilm.com/hitchcock/hitchmain2.html>Definative Alfred Hitchcock
Links page and an about.com classic movies href=http://classicfilm.about.com/library/weekly/aa080899.htm>guide to Hitchcock
sites. The Hitchcock
Centenial Project has essays and details
on various events. The site for the href=http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/>MacGuffin, a journal
on Hitchcock, has lots of links to essays (including http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/melodramas_c.html>Why I Make Melodramas
by Hitchock from 1936) and other information along with updates on the http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html>news page.

posted by steve at 6/15/2000 03:14:00 PM

He makes installations and photographs on political issues. It is hard to give a sense of his installation work without actually walking through it,
but there is some information on him on the web. There is a review of his Ruwanda Project, and The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, a piece from it is online. There is an interview
with him.

Eyestorm has a page on him
with links to a bio and a number of his photographs. A site
has examples of his work. There is a picture of
an installation he did in the NYC subway. One of the galleries he is currently represented by is hosfelt gallery in San Francisco.

posted by steve at 6/15/2000 11:57:00 AM

It was bought by Artisan which has sold it straight to cable. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post tells
the tale today in Profit Picture Fills Indie Film Distributors' Screen.
posted by steve at 6/15/2000 11:12:00 AM

A number of people have pointed out it make a good companion
piece to The Problem With Music by Steve Albini which was originally published in
The Baffler. Another perspective comes from record exec Danny Goldberg in
The Ballad of the Mid-Level Artist (it is currently free, but inside.com says they will start charging for content).

posted by steve at 6/14/2000 01:48:00 PM

TNT is having a Shaft marathon tonight. The remake
opnes Friday. blaxploitation.com provides background on the genre. http://theoriginalshaft.com/>The Original Shaft is Richard Roundtree's site. Black Power is
by Darius James, author of That's Blaxploitation!

The Institute For War & Peace Reporting continues to provide excellent coverage
of the Balkans and other regions. Recent articles include an examination
of the role of psychics in Serbia and a piece on Serbian Cinema.
posted by steve at 6/13/2000 01:16:00 PM

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. has issued a statement on the case and introduced http://www.jessejacksonjr.org/query/creadpr.cgi?id=%22001006%22>legislation that would
impose a moratorium on executions. Jackson sends out regular email alerts you can sign up for.

Steve Mills talked (real audio link) about the Chicago Tribune http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ws/0,1246,45186,00.html>series on the death penalty in Texas on Monday's All Things Considered.

posted by steve at 6/13/2000 01:31:00 AM

Drudge has linked to stories on the book at least twice since it was announced. Currently, his blaring headline is

ESZTERHAS BOOK FEATURES TALKING BILL CLINTON PENIS

The item mentions that Eszterhas will appear on the Today show to promote his book, but it doesn't
mention that Drudge is also part of Knopf's promotonal campaign. And one wonders if Drudge has easier access to his "publishing source" because of this.

Yes, Drudge Drudge probably would have written about it anyway (how could he resist a book with a TALKING BILL CLINTON PENIS?). Still, he should add that Knopf is advertising on his site to this item and any future items on the book. I emailed him asking him to, but I don't expect him
to. He is aware of the ad buy since I emailed him about it last week.

Although Drudge is often used as the boogeyman of online journalism, he is rarely held up to real scrutiny.
posted by steve at 6/12/2000 09:11:00 AM

Farai Chideya is one of the journalists asking Gore questions.
posted by steve at 6/12/2000 02:16:00 AM

A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995, the study mention
in the US News article I wrote about on Saturday, is now online. There is a New York Times article on the study, http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/061200death-penalty.htm>Death Sentences Being Overturned in 2 of 3 Appeals.
As does the Washinton Post - Most Death Sentences Reversed, Study Finds/

The Post also has a story today on Gary Graham,
81 Death Penalty Case Confronts Bush. US News and the Chicago Tribune pieces also have written about Graham.
Bush's death penalty dodge in Salon
looks at Graham's case and a number of others.

posted by steve at 6/12/2000 02:09:00 AM

F**cked Company: The Dot Com Deadpool

http://www.fuckedcompany.com

A variation on the classic celebrity death pool game, F**cked Company
invites savvy business watchers to bet on the demise of shaky Internet
companies. Points are awarded relative to the severity of the company's
downward spiral: IPO delays, staff layoffs, tanking stock prices, funding
failures, etc. A clinically filtered news section offers the latest
casualty reports, and confirmed kills are verified by Dotcomfailures,
whose motto reads "kick 'em while they're down."

The Chicago Tribune today has the first part of a two part series, the State of Execution,
investigating the death penalty in Texas. It concludes:

Of the 131 cases where a Death Row inmate has been executed in Texas under George W. Bush:

• 40 involved trials where the defense attorneys presented no evidence or only one witness during the sentencing
  
  phase.
  
  
• 29 included a psychiatrist who gave testimony that the American Psychiatric Association condemned as unethical
  
  and untrustworthy.
  
  
• 43 included defense attorneys publicly sanctioned for misconduct -- either before or after their work on these
  
  cases.
  
  
• 23 included jailhouse informants, considered to be among the least credible of witnesses.
  
  
• 23 included visual hair analysis, which has consistently proved unreliable.
  

Bush responded to the charges in the article:

The Republican presidential candidate expressed confidence in his state’s system of capital punishment and has said he sees no need to institute a moratorium.

     "I know there are some in the country who don’t care for the death penalty, but I’ve said once and I’ve said a lot, that in every cases, we’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt," Bush, the Texas governor, said Sunday after attending church with his father near the family retreat.

     "If you’re asking me whether or not as to the innocence or guilt or if people have had adequate access to the courts in Texas, I believe they have," Bush continued.

"They’ve had full access to the courts. They’ve had full access to a fair trial."

The Tribune had earlier done a series, The Failure of
the Death Penalty in Illinois which helped lead a to moratorium on executions in Illinois.


posted by steve at 6/11/2000 08:42:00 AM

Today's Washington Post has a story, Texas to Review Death Sentences.
An expert witness for the state, psychologist Walter Quijano, testified in a number of cases that the race of the defendent
should be a factor in deciding the penalty.

US News has a story this week on a http://207.153.244.129/index.html>study
on the death penalty.

In a study of the more than 4,500 death penalty appeals filed from 1973 to
1995, Columbia University law professor http://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/jliebman.html>James Liebman found that a plethora
of mistakes led to reversals in an astonishing 68 percent of the cases
nationally. "Capital trials produce so many mistakes," he says, "leaving
grave doubt about whether we do catch them all."

The study, to be released this week, is the most comprehensive review ever
of death penalty decisions. The number of problem cases is far higher than
previously believed. The results place the blame for most of the foul-ups on
prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. Legal observers have long been
concerned about overzealous prosecutors and indifferent judges. But it is
the incompetent defense attorney who's now getting attention. Liebman found
the problem is no longer limited to a few good old boys coming to court
drunk. Rather, there are far more lawyers who are just not very goodPor very
experienced with the legal demands of capital cases.

Examples abound. There was the lawyer in California who told a jury that
killing his client would free him of his mental illness. There were the
defense attorneys in Georgia who failed to tell a jury their client was
retardedPa fact that would have exempted him from the death penalty. Then
there was the attorney in Texas who failed to call alibi witnesses. He
couldn't be faulted, a judge wrote, because he was paid just $11.84 an hour.
The state, the judge ruled, "got only what it paid for."...

Liebman's study also debunks a common belief that federal judges bog down
the death penalty system by doing most of the reversing. State judges are
far more active, finding "serious error" in 47 percent of the cases they
reviewed. And retrial in state courts produced lesser sentences in 82
percent of those cases. Seven percent of the people retried were acquitted.
"It's a secret the system has kept for a long time," Liebman says. State
judges in Wyoming, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina
found the most mistakesPin some states more than three fourths of cases they
reviewed.

Liebman says it takes time for appeals court judges to sort through the
large number of mistakes made in capital cases. Under the best
circumstances, the legal process takes time. But in cases where the outcome
is literally a matter of life or death, reviewing the records takes years.
Even then, however, there is no guarantee that some who have been wrongfully
convicted aren't paying with their lives.

They break it up into a number
of categories. This week's Trends show how many copies books adapted
into films sold the week the movie was released and during the previous two months. They need to add a category for science
fiction and an archive.
posted by steve at 6/10/2000 01:55:00 PM

I picked up an advance copy of Pedro and Me, an excellent
graphic novel about Pedro Zamora by Judd Winick.
It will be published by Henry Holt in September.
posted by steve at 6/10/2000 01:06:00 PM

Update - MJ Rose has a story on it for Wired News,
Stephen King, the E-Publisher (6-11-00).
And now a follow-up, King's Fans Want New E-Book (6-15-00),
which reports that King will start posting The Plant in mid-July. An announcement will be made on his site
on July 8th.
posted by steve at 6/09/2000 03:37:00 PM

The News Hour on PBS has an interview with Dr.
Gerome Groopman who wrote Second Opinions, one of the books Harriet mentions in her Suck interview. It is one
of a series of conversations they have with authors.

posted by steve at 6/09/2000 10:33:00 AM

You can also listen to and read
a Newshour discussion on the case and innovation featuring Paul Kedrosky, Jason Lanier and others. The New York Times has a =http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/09trial.html>Special Report on the case.

I've started contributing to Rewired: Blog of a Strained Net
where a version of this item appears. It was started by David Hudson who did Rewired from 1996 to 1999. David interviewed Rebecca Eisenberg and I back in 1996.
posted by steve at 6/09/2000 08:37:00 AM

The Wall Street Journal also has an interview with Jackson, Judge says Microsoft
damaged its own credibility in court:

The judge himself explains:

       “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” he says, citing a Latin aphorism meaning, “Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything.”

       “I don’t subscribe to that as absolutely true,” the judge says. “But it does lead one to suspicion. It’s a universal human experience. If someone lies to you once, how much else can you credit as the truth?”

       In an extraordinary interview for a sitting federal judge, Judge Jackson made it clear that Microsoft’s credibility problems in the courtroom compromised its defense and contributed significantly to the judge’s decision Wednesday to break the company in two and impose stiff restrictions on Microsoft’s business practices...

"I had to make judgments about the credibility of witnesses, and I found some of them more credible than others,” he said. Judge Jackson declined to cite specific instances during the trial, and he gingerly stepped around legal issues that might arise on appeal. But he did add, “Things did not start well for them.”
In the interview, Judge Jackson said, “I have to make judgments about motives and credibility all the time... . And it was quite clear to me that the motive of Microsoft in bundling the Internet browser was not one of consumer convenience. The evidence that this was done for the consumer was not credible... . The evidence was so compelling that there was an ulterior motive.”...

 But the judge rejected the appellate court’s admonition in the June 1998 ruling that courts shouldn’t get involved in how software works. “I may not be equipped to make judgments about software design, but I am equipped to judge what a particular design is, in terms of its economic effect.”

       Judge Jackson also dismissed Microsoft’s complaints that it wasn’t given time to argue against a breakup and that his decision not to allow that time violated proper procedure. He said, “it’s procedurally unusual to do what Microsoft is proposing — are you aware of very many cases in which the defendant can argue with the jury about what an appropriate sanction should be? Were the Japanese allowed to propose the terms of their surrender? The government won the case.”

posted by steve at 6/08/2000 10:37:00 AM

Gates and other people from Microsoft keep on saying they want to innovate and serve their custumers and journalists keep
failing to point out that they do neither.

The Washington Post has an interview with Judge Jackson.
Andrew Leonard has an excellent piece on Salon, Microsoft owes everything to Justice on the impact the anti-trust case against IBM had on Microsoft. And he co-wrote a http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/07/breakup/index.html>piece on the decision with Janelle Brown.

As I write this, Slate doesn't have anything up about the decision. The http://slate.msn.com/diary/00-06-05/diary.asp>diary this week by Bill Flannigan of VH1 is pretty interesting though.

posted by steve at 6/07/2000 11:49:00 PM