This Engadget post gives me a lot of hope for Sony and the anti-DRM movement. Apparently the download cards are only the first half of Sony's plan and they also plan on releasing DRM-free tracks on Amazon's MP3 store, which is quickly gaining steam and has DRM-free content from all 4 major labels. I wouldn't declare a complete victory over DRM yet. There's still plenty of DRM'd contented being sold and there's the whole realm of movies left as well. This is a pretty big step though and for that we should all be happy.

This kind of scares me:

Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the M.P.A.A. and R.I.A.A., for the last six months about carrying out digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.

“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”

No, I'm not scared of anti-piracy measures, despite the fact that I think most of them are worthless. I'm scared because I've seen what it's like to have network level filtering and what it leads to. Great Firewall of China, anyone? Yeah, I might be taking a big leap there, but it's a slippery slope. I know for a fact that Obama is a firm supporter of net neutrality. I don't know where the other candidates stand but I will definitely be looking into that. It's an important issue that we all need to be aware of. It won't just effect hackers and pirates and the like, trust me. If you're not aware of the situation, educate yourself and help get the word out.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of movies without Ric because so many of the ones he's gone to this year have been disappointing, but we were both game to see a brainless movie. I wasn't expecting to like Walk Hard because the advertising was pretty goofy, but there were a lot of positive reviews from critics, so I was hoping for the best.

The movie stars John C. Reilly, which was a draw for me in itself. Reilly has spent so much of the time as as sidekick or an ensemble cast member that he rarely has gotten to shine on his own in movies. Here, he easily takes on the role of Dewey Cox in this musical bio spoof.

Taking a bit of Ray, a bit of Walk the Line, and following the multiple-decade format of any music star biography, Walk Hard begins with Dewey's humble beginnings by showing his tragic childhood, which involves an incident with a machete that leaves him without his sense of smell. He goes on from there determined to build a name for himself in the music industry. He becomes famous, marries, falls in love with his June Carter equivalent (played nicely by Jenna Fischer), and goes through many different evolutions of himself as music genres change through the years.

I like that the movie acknowledges that Reilly is too old to play himself in high school, and I like how it starts out as a pretty legit parody of this type of film. One of the funniest moments was when Dewey first discovers his bandmates smoking pot in the bathroom, and they tell him he doesn't want to mess with drugs. The scene is familiar, but the conversation is a classic.

I think the movie is at its funniest when it's actually tapping into the different musical genres and functioning actively as a parody. Some of the songs are clever, especially "Let's Duet", and my favorite scene is a very quick clip when Dewey is singing a David Bowie song in a space suit on a variety show.

Unfortunately, one of the faults of Walk Hard is that it relies on recurring jokes too heavily (although I admit the pulling-sinks-from-off-the-wall bit amusing), and it goes for the grotesque or extreme a bit too often for my tastes. Dewey and Darlene can't just kiss, they have to swish their tongues around exaggeratedly. I guess the line between parody and over-the-top is a little bit more clear cut for me, and this movie crossed it a bit too often. Surprisingly, even though I would say it went too far in some areas, it didn't seem to pack as much of a punch as the critics seemed to indicate. My audience didn't crack up like they would watching a Will Ferrell movie, which is usually that type of over-the-top. It gave me a general smile here and there, and only struck comedy gold every so often.

I wouldn't say that I didn't like Walk Hard, but I do feel that it had the potential to be a better movie. If you haven't seen it and were interested, then sure, it's worth a buck-fifty at the cheap theater. It served its purpose and gave me a few laughs, but I'll probably never watch it again.