First of all - YAY! Scrooged is on blu-ray! It's about time, too. It's one of my favorite Christmas movies, as well as one of my favorite Bill Murray movies. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's one of my favorite movies, period. 

And how about that poster art? Sure, it's basically the big, floating head of Bill Murray over the top of a landscape -- AKA the laziest poster design you can possibly do -- but it's still classic. It's because it doesn't sacrifice character for economy. Bill Murray isn't in a glamour headshot -- he's scared to death. And you have the skeletal hand reaching out with the match lighting the cigar, that key point framed by the pale, featureless moon. It's dark, slick, ghostly, very 80's-modern, and funny. In short, it's a perfect summation of the movie.

When they shifted it to the DVD cover art, they didn't do a whole lot of futzing about with the design, either. They moved the title to the top of the image so they could do away with the black border, and they replaced the original tagline with a blurb from People magazine. It also had that faded, washed-out look that suggests somebody really didn't care how the poster art translated to the DVD case. But it was still the same basic, clean design that anybody who remembers the poster could recognize.

So either the designers of the DVD art didn't want to do very much work, or they realized a good thing when they saw it. And the two options are not mutually exclusive. But the blu-ray artwork....

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way, first. Yes, they stuck a blue snowflake border around the image. Then, just in case they hadn't driven home the fact that this is a Christmas movie, they took the skeletal arm's dapper suit sleeve with its prominent cufflink and replaced it with a Santa suit sleeve. 

It doesn't match the feel of the movie, it doesn't add anything to the image, and then there's the fact that he sleeve itself is a lousy, slapdash Photoshop job that doesn't seem to be responding to gravity in a manner to which cloth is accustomed.

And how about that gorgeous black background from the original poster, broken only by the city landscape with its murky, orange, city lights glow and the near-solid blue-white disc of the moon that highlights the match and the cigar? Well, we thought we'd just make the glow around the city bigger, and brighter, and bluer. And what the moon always needed was a big, blue halo, not to mention plenty of detail on the moon's surface so the match flame can almost disappear in what is quickly becoming a very cluttered image.

Oh, and let's talk about that city skyline, too. Notice anything missing? Anything big? As a matter of fact, two anythings?

Yes, the Scrooged cover art is one of the latest to have the World Trade Center excised from the New York City skyline. Now, I understand that there are people who still get choked up every time they see a picture of New York with the twin towers still intact. It's a powerful image for Americans after 9/11. And whenever you publish something with the twin towers front and center - like, say, most images of the New York skyline published before 2001, somebody somewhere is sure to complain that you're being insensitive.

But Scrooged was released in 1988. It's very clearly set in 1988. And in 1988 the towers still stood. Are we really not permitted to depict the city as it once was?

Oh, well. It's not the first time people have felt the need to "improve" on a classic design, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Wait.

Oh, you rank bastards.

Bill Murray's necktie wasn't festive enough for you?

-C Glen Williams

Earlier today, I got an e-mail that dredged up memories -- not an e-mail from a friend, mind you, nor even from an individual intent on making a connection. This e-mail came from an online store that wanted to sell me something. Specifically, they wanted to sell me a blu-ray of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Or, rather, they wanted to sell me Giorgio Moroder's Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Moroder's version of Metropolis was a half-remembered thing to me -- something that at times I was certain I had dreamed. Scenes tinted wild colors, synth pop and occasional vocals underlying key scenes, all of it as much a product of 1980's America as it was a product of Germany of the late 1920's.

My mother worked at a college, and when I was a young teen with nothing to do in the summer, she would take me to campus and leave me to alternate between the gym and the library. It was in that library that I dredged up a VHS copy of Moroder's Metropolis and tried to make some sense of what I was seeing.

It turns out I'm not the only one. Moroder's edit is highly controversial. There are people who love it and there are people who pray for every copy of it to be destroyed in a fire. Preferably a public bonfire so that they may dance about it and make merry. But whatever side you might be on, it's hard to deny that Moroder thought of his Metropolis as a labor of love. And love, however dirty, debauched, and disgusting it may seem to those watching from the outside, is nevertheless love.

To Moroder, his Metropolis was both a restoration and a rescue. He was editing in some of what had been lost in Metropolis' original journey through American theaters, and along the way he was adding more visual and auditory interest for an audience that had grown up never knowing silent films as anything more than weekend Public Television filler. And what better way to add interest than to add new music? It was a natural conclusion for the man who wrote such film hits as "Putting out the Fire" (Cat People), "Radar Radio" (Top Gun), "Take My Breath Away" (Any movie that wanted to push an 80's vibe but was made post-1995), and "Flashdance... What A Feeling" (Oh, come on, you can guess what movie that's from), to name just a few.

What Moroder created ultimately was not Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was his own vision, using Lang's work as raw materials. And Moroder was able to do it because of the public domain. At the time Moroder set to work on Metropolis, it was in the public domain inside the United States. That meant that he could mold, shape, and rebuild (or fold, spindle, and mutilate) the film as they saw fit without owing an apology to anyone. 

His version did not replace the original. It did not supplant the original. It existed alongside it as another artist's take on and expansion of the original. Just as Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland didn't replace Lewis Carroll's, Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings didn't replace Tolkien's, and Michael Almereyda's Hamlet didn't replace Shakespeare's -- nor did it replace Branagh's, Olivier's, or any of the multitudes of cinematic treatments that preceded it or would follow it.

This is the promise of the public domain. The closed-off culture we consume in our youth eventually becomes the shared culture that we can all draw from, build on, and recreate. And as Moroder found out, not everybody may love you for it -- but nobody can keep you from it. Your culture is your right.

Which makes Moroder's Metropolis even more a product of the 80's. The Fritz Lang film had its copyright restored in 1998 due to a new international copyright treaty. What Moroder accomplished and released in 1984 can no longer be done legally by any modern artist. This 1927 film is once again off-limits except to the current copyright-holders.

Some would say, "For better or for worse," there will not be a new Moroder Metropolis for years to come. I, for one, think we are all poorer for not even being given the opportunity.

The Kids on the Street have completed their riff on Arthur H. Smith's classic amateur horror/suspense flick, "The Mirror!" And you can watch it for free!

Where?

Well, how about right here?

Arthur H. Smith's The Mirror: A Joint from the Kids on the Street is Creative Commons-licensed, so feel free to reshare, remix, and have fun with the video! A full description of the Creative Commons license can be viewed on the Creative Commons website. In addition, a free download of the video will be available on Archive.org soon, as well as a Kids-only mix of the audio that will be released under an even more liberal license.

Share, enjoy, and watch out for mirrors!

Hullo, everybody! It's been a pretty big year for the Kids, and in our inaugural update it's time to talk about the end of the season.
That's right - the end of the season. The Kids on the Street: Season One is drawing to an end this month with three releases.
First comes Arthur H. Smith's The Mirror, a tasty little gem from the early days of independent filmmaking. And it's a bit of a departure from the status quo. The Mirror is a Creative Commons-licensed film, so we'll be releasing our joint under a Creative Commons license, as well! That's right -- the next Kids on the Street joint will be absolutely free, available to stream from YouTube and to download from the Internet Archive. We'll also be releasing the raw audio for the riff (video not included) under a CC license that permits commercial use. And you'll finally get to hear Kristy Beidleman take a crack at a movie, too! 
Then, in quick succession, we'll be seeing The Violent Years (handled by Glen, Elizabeth, and Charles) and The Wild Ride (handled by Glen and Elizabeth). Both will be released as Video-On-Demand products through our usual channel at the iRiffs store.
And that's it for the Kids in 2011.
But if you join us in 2012, you'll see we've got some very cool things coming! Like what?
Here's the scoop --

• January! Ghost Rider: The Extended Cut (Picked by our audience!)
• February! "Ghost Rider" - a production of Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (A video-on-demand short)
• March! Captain America - From 1990, starring Matt "Yes, I'm J.D's Son" Salinger as the star-spangled man

And that's just the first three months! It's going to be a bumper crop this year, so get your discs ready, pop some popcorn, and settle in for Season Two of The Kids on the Street!