Patton Oswalt Talent Showcase: A new script from Erik Blevins, titled “Baby Grandmas”: “Hilarity changes its name to hi-fucking-larity because of the hijinks that are packed into this hilarious script: hijinks+hilarious equals the word “fucking” in there between the hilarity-word.” The last paragraph should sum things up quite nicely:

ACT THREE: Just a whole lot of funny shit at once with the Lady Scientist falling into a pool and the monkey drives a steam roller and chases the mayor and the baby grandmas form a rap group with their granddaughter and there’s also a treasure that the two grandmas use to buy them each their own granddaughter (after they turn back all oldy like real grandmas). END CREDITS MUSIC: Bobby Brown “My Prerogative”

Hah! I just put 2 and 2 together, and realized that if I was still at my previous job (as an art director and designer at a big interactive shop) that I would have been working on Movielink.com, the ill-fated attempt by Hollywood to deliver movies over the Internet. Funny! And now that I know the connection, it all makes sense why the back-end production blows real hard.

My previous theory was that it was purposely done shoddily, as a sort of fodder for the movie industry to give a quick “see, we tried, and it didn’t work, thus don’t need to go any further” excuse. Now I’m not so sure…

Of the 25 films recently selected to the National Film Registry to be preserved and restored for eternity, we here at Magnetbox have seen:

Alien (1979)

Boyz N the Hood (1991)

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Ah, how cultured we are.

Comp time: Screen shots of computers featured in films. Can you guess what movies they were taken from?

Dan Gillmor: Studios’ copyright goal is total control: To protect a business model and thwart even the possibility of infringement, the cartel wants technology companies to ask permission before they can innovate. The media giants want to keep information flow centralized, to control the new medium as if it’s nothing but a jazzed-up television. Instead of accepting, as they do today, that a certain amount of penny-ante infringement will occur and then going after the major-league pirates, they call every act of infringement — and some things that aren’t infringement at all — an act of piracy or stealing. Saying it doesn’t make it so.

Study Faults Media Focus on Copyright Piracy: Media companies must put less emphasis on protecting digital content and instead find ways to make money from digital music and movies if they hope to beat back copyright pirates who threaten their businesses, according to a study released on Wednesday from KPMG.

“What we don’t see is a real questioning of business models,” said Ashley Steel of KPMG. “They complain about the Napsters, but why do the Napsters exist? Because the marketplace wants them.” Steel said that if the issue “is not on boardroom table… then that boardroom has problems.”

Sony Takes Axe to Betamax: Sony’s Betamax video tape recorder, which famously lost the 1980s video format war but held on for decades as a niche product, will finally be laid to rest after digital formats delivered a death blow to its prospects. Time to sell the ol’ top-loader on eBay.

‘This American Life’ stories coming to big screen: Warner Bros. Pictures has inked a first-look deal with This American Life, the eclectic weekly public radio show hosted by Ira Glass.”It’s like we do little movies for radio,” Glass told Daily Variety. “We’re people with a lot of stories and not much money, and they have a lot of money and need stories.”

Wheels Within Wheels: The trailer for Benicio Del Toro’s latest film has a twist: there is no film. Danny Leigh on how Mercedes pulled the wool over our eyes. (I’m not sure about you, but this looks pretty real to me.)

Pulling More Than Your Leg: The Directing Kooks of Traktor: They mess with people’s heads, these Traktor guys. They’ve been doing it for nearly 10 years. Each year they win more awards for their dazzling tomfoolery, which probably makes them think they have the right to mess with more heads.