Here’s a bit of candy to keep you entertained while I settle into the post-Cannes, post-holiday bloggy business as usual. Continuing the Muppets revisionist cinematic history trend (first came Sesame Streets by Martin Scorsese, then Elmo auditioned for a remake of Casino (he lost the role to Ernie, apparently), here comes The Muppets Take Manhattan. We always suspected that Kermit was the Woody Allen of Sesame Street, and now we have the visual proof.

Via Gawker.

• New Line is showing a promo video for the Sex and the City movie at New York Fashion Week. Jezebel says: “Samantha’s L.A wardrobe is all in primary colors; Charlotte is mainly wearing Prada, and Miranda continues to wear suits. Because she works.”
• Did Xanadu invent the mashup? The Underwire looks at the evidence.
• Speaking of the disasterpieces of the 80s, RC at Strange Culture wonders if there were any legitimately “good” films released that entire decade. “In fact, most 80s films are so quirky they might as well be instantly considered period pieces, even if at the time they had every intention of being contemporary or non-script in their portrayal of time.”
• At Pajiba, The Boozehound Cinephile pairs rum with Juno. “Once I lost myself in the film, the rum-and-coke flavor allowed me to fantasize that I was making out with Alison Janney and that she tasted like a rum-cola slushee, so that part was an A+.”

In Variety, Scott Kirsner looks at a new technology at YouTube called Video ID, which Kirsner describes as a “lost-and-found desk for unauthorized video content…through which media companies can “claim” videos that have been uploaded to YouTube without permission.”In a brief entry inspired by the LA Times‘ coverage of Video ID, Chuck Tryon comments that there are potentially “some real problems here in that many of the videos that would be subject to removal would fall into Fair Use categories,” and Kirsner does address this in his story. Noting that the YouTube faithful tend to “get steamed when the site takes down videos that make incidental use of copyright material, especially parodies or commentaries,” Kirsner reports that YouTube is reticent to explain exactly how Video ID works, because they don’t want videomakers who are using copyrighted content (whether within the bounds of Fair Use or not) to be able to easily skirt the system.

It’s entirely possible that Video ID could prove to be entirely blind to fair use; there’s also the issue of conflicts between copyright holders, as well as a lot of possible damage to YouTube’s organically aggregated fan communities. More thoughts after the jump.

…Read more