Category: Cinema, television and theatre

Copyright and the National Anthem – Bonus Links

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Copyright, National Anthem

Bonus, via flickrMy last three posts (here, here, here) have looked at some copyright issues around the national anthem. Their immediate context was Senator Mark Daly‘s National Anthem (Protection of Copyright and Related Rights) (Amendment) (No 2) Bill 2016 (effectively reviving a Bill that he had introduced into the last Seanad earlier in the year). To provide a little lighter reading on the topic, here are 4 sets of bonus links about the copyright, the anthem, or both.

Bonus 1: Alex Marshall (blog | twitter), author of Republic or Death!: Travels in Search of National Anthems (Penguin | Amazon), writing in the Irish Times (h/t Alex’s blog), put “The Soldier’s Song” into the context of other national anthems. It’s a very entertaining piece. While he bemoans the relative obscurity of Peader Kearney and Patrick Heeney, he consigns Liam Ó Rinn to oblivion – he finishes the piece with the first line of “Amhrán na bhFiann”, but he doesn’t name-check Ó Rinn at all!

Bonus 2: I was on the the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio 1 the Sunday morning before last (listen here), on The Last Word with Matt Cooper on TodayFM the following Monday evening (listen here), and on the Shaun Doherty Show on Highland Radio the following Wednesday morning (listen here until the end of the week).…

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There’s an adjective for #Gryzzl on “Parks and Recreation” – it’s dysagurian

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Dysaguria, Press Council, Privacy

Gryzzl HQThe mockumentary-style tv comedy series Parks and Recreation, according to Wikipedia, is “an American comedy on the NBC television network, starring Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a perky, mid-level bureaucrat in the parks department of Pawnee, a fictional town in Indiana”. According to IMDB, the series relates the “absurd antics of an Indiana town’s public officials as they pursue sundry projects to make their city a better place”. In Ireland, at least one season has been shown RTÉ Two; and in the UK, three seasons have been shown on BBC4. Alert: so, for Irish and UK readers of the blog who are fans of the show (and the Daily Edge recently gave 7 reasons why we should be), the remainder of this post is a great big spoiler.

At the end of series 6, Pawnee thinks they’ve struck gold when Gryzzl, an internet company marketing itself as “the cloud for your cloud”, sets up in town. But, in the farewell series 7, all is not well between Leslie and Gryzzl. …

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The Contract in The Hobbit

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Contract

Bilbo Baggins Contract, via AmazonFollowing on from my posts about the contract law issues in Shrek Forever After and The Muppets, another major movie brings us interesting contract law issues: The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey (blog | facebook | imdb | official site | twitter | wikipedia).

Warning: plot spoilers Bilbo Baggins is a typical hobbit, enjoying his quiet life in the Shire, when he is manoeuvred by the wizard Gandalf the Grey into hosting dinner for a company of dwarves. They tell him the story of how they lost their kingdom of Erebor and its great treasure to the terrifying dragon Smaug, and how they are now on a quest to reclaim their kingdom and treasure under the leadership of the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakenshield. Moreover, since a company of thirteen (twelve dwarves, and Gandalf) invites bad luck, they tell him that Gandalf had proposed him as a fourteenth member, as a burglar. Bilbo and the dwarves are unconvinced, but Gandalf re-assures them that Bilbo will prove more than up to the task when the time comes (“Hobbits can pass unseen by most if they chose which gives us a distinct advantage” in sneaking past Smaug), so the dwarves present Bilbo with a contract to join the company (script | video clip, via blog and YouTube):

Thorin: Give him the contract.

…

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Law and Justice on the Small Screen

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| Cinema, television and theatre

Law and Justice on the Small Screen, book cover via Hart Publishing websiteHart Publishing has just announced the publication of Law and Justice on the Small Screen, edited by Peter Robson (University of Strathclyde) and Jessica Silbey (Suffolk University Law School).

This is the book description from the Hart website:

Law and Justice on the Small Screen is a wide-ranging collection of essays about law in and on television. In light of the book’s innovative taxonomy of the field and its international reach, it will make a novel contribution to the scholarly literature about law and popular culture. Television shows from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the United States are discussed. The essays are organised into three sections: (1) methodological questions regarding the analysis of law and popular culture on television; (2) a focus on genre studies within television programming (including a subsection on reality television), and (3) content analysis of individual television shows with attention to big-picture jurisprudential questions of law’s efficacy and the promise of justice. The book’s content is organised to make it appropriate for undergraduate and graduate classes in the following areas: media studies, law and culture, socio-legal studies, comparative law, jurisprudence, the law of lawyering, alternative dispute resolution and criminal law.

…

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The Muppets and Contract Law

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Contract

The 'Stardard Rich and Famous Contract' in the Muppet Movie, via the Muppet wikiaI’ve recently had the great good fortune to see The Muppets (2011) (imdb | official site | wikipedia). Like the recent classic movie Shrek Forever After, it is very much a movie about contract law: indeed, both movies turn on cultural assumptions about the binding nature and literal enforcement of written contracts.

Warning: plot spoilers At the end of The Muppet Movie (1979) (imdb | wikipedia), the Muppets are hired by studio executive Lew Lord (played – in a splendid cigar-chomping movie-stealing cameo – by Orson Welles) under “the standard rich-and-famous contract” (pictured above left). It has the generally assumed form of contracts: it is long; indeed, it is vveerry long – it contains a multitude of clauses, and those terms are the heart of the new movie: The Muppets. Nancy Kim on Contracts Prof Blog mentions a few of the issues:

… the star of the new Muppets movie is a long, scrolled, fine print contract signed by none other than Kermit the Frog. The entire plot hinges on … a condition in the contract … A real live condition – but is it a condition precedent or condition subsequent? In addition, there are issues of nondisclosure (there’s oil under the theatre, but the evil Tex Richman isn’t telling).

…

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Should galleries and museums display offensive art?

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| Blasphemy, Censorship, Cinema, television and theatre, James Joyce

'The Death of American Spirituality' by David Wojnarowicz (1987) from the collection of John Carlin and Renee Dossick, via the Queer Arts siteI have on this blog regularly discussed the extent to which offensive speech can be restricted. For example, there are many (many) posts on this blog on censorship and blasphemy. Furthermore, I have referred to the censorship of Guillaume Apollinaire (here and here), Carolina Gustavsson, Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence (here, here and here), James Joyce, John Latham, Robert Mapplethorpe and Vladimir Nabokov. Moreover, I have analysed the kinds of reasons why this kind of speech should not be censored: free speech means freedom for the thought we hate, even that of David Irving (eg, here, here, here, and here), Jean-Marie le Pen, or Kevin Myers, and even – especially! – in multi-cultural societies, especially – especially!! – online.

I was reminded of all of this by two recent blogposts. …

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Turner, Garrow, Zong; Contract law and the slave trade, redux

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Contract, The Zong

Slave Ship by Turner, via WikipediaI love the paintings of WIlliam Turner (1775–1851). Every January, the Vaughan bequest of Turner watercolours goes on display in the National Gallery of Ireland, and every January I spend a happy Saturday afternoon in their company. One of Turner’s most arresting paintings is The Slave Ship (Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on) (1840) which is now on display in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (thumbnail, left; click through for better image). It is inspired in part by the story of the slaveship The Zong (replica image | image | story | wikipedia). In 1781, the shipowners claimed under an insurance contract for the value of lost cargo, which consisted of 133 slaves thrown overboard because the ship was running out of water (it is voyage 84106 on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database). The captain claimed he acted out of necessity; and in the infamous case of Gregson v Gilbert (1783) 3 Doug 232, 99 ER 629, [1783] EngR 85 (22 May 1783) (pdf | National Archives), the claim succeeded at first instance, but failed on appeal.

Although this action was for breach of contract, it is the inspiration for the main action in last night’s episode of Garrow’s Law (BBC | imdb | wikipedia), a BBC television series inspired by the life and times of 18th century barrister William Garrow.…

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Shrek and the Law of Contract

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| Cinema, television and theatre, Contract, General

Faustian bargains are at the heart of Shrek Forever After, the final chapter in the Shrek franchise, and those bargains raise interesting questions for the law of contract (even as the marketing of the film has raised others).

Like Australia (and in many ways even more than the obvious Paper Chase) Shrek Forever After is really A Movie About Contract Law!

Warning: plot spoilers When the movie begins, our hero, Shrek, is suffering a classic mid-life crisis; he is dissatisfied with married life, and pining for the old days, when he was a terrifying ogre rather than a domesticated tourist attraction. Rumpelstiltskin, the evil and manipulative magic deal-maker, offers Shrek the opportunity to spend a day as a real ogre again, in return for another day from Shrek’s childhood. The YouTube clip at the top left is the scene in which Rumpelstiltskin cajoles Shrek into agreeing. Having signed on the dotted line, Shrek is transported into an alternate reality. At first, he enjoys being fearsome one again. But the catch – and there’s always a catch – is that the day Rumpelstiltskin takes is the day of Shrek’s birth. This means that Shrek was not there to rescue Princess Fiona in the first movie; and her desperate parents, King Harold and Queen Lillian, turned to Rumpelstiltskin, and signed over the kingdom of Far Far Away to him in return for having all of their problems disappear.…

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