This sort of thing drives me nuts because (a) the videogame industry isn’t that hard to cover and (b) it’s a big enough sector that it deserves semi-serious coverage of its business aspects. But here’s Joystiq on a NYT story:

First the Old Gray Lady says Gran Turismo 5 is “a hyper-realistic, high-speed journey, [and] is one of the best sellers for [the] Sony console.” One little problem, the game isn’t out yet. Next up they say the PlayStation 3 is $299, which would be awesome and perhaps the Times has some incredibly privileged info about Sony’s holiday strategy, but we’re pretty sure the system is going to be starting at $399 for a while. Oh, but they’re not done yet. Did you realize the PS3 and Xbox 360 are both powered by the Cell processor? This is being reported by the venerable New York-freakin’-Times, so it must be true, right?

Goodness knows there’s nothing wrong with making a mistake in writing a story. And maybe these errors were inserted by copyeditors and not the reporter. But these errors are so elementary that they suggest that the writer knows very little about the business and is just kind of parachuting in because someone assigned the story to him.

How hard would it be to have one guy on your business staff whose job was to keep half and eye on videogames while he went about his other beats?

“Britain Schemes To Come In Fourth”

The Empire really is dead, isn’t it?

KSK is doing a little gag trying to come up with terrible movie pitches. No offense to Big Daddy Drew, but his list is really only a jumping off point. The real gold is in the comments section:

* Bryan said…

We all know Custer died at Little Big Horn. What this film presupposes is: what if he didn’t?

* Rob I said…

Air Bud IV: There Will Be Bud

* Robert said…

Face/Off 2, starring David Schwimmer and Adrien Brody.

The Jerry Bruckheimer adaptation of Care Bears: The Movie.

Stephen A. Smith: The Musical

Hot.

And there are now pictures of the new K.I.T.T.

Also, if you care, Warner Bros. seems to have cast the role of Wonder Woman for Justice League. It’s an unknown Australian model, which is actually as a good a way to go as any, provided shes (a) tall and (b) kind of regal/imperious.

What’s that? You want pictures of her? Fine here. And if you’re NOT AT WORK here.

(M.G. you should be in the clear.)

Call me crazy, but there’s something intriguing about The Life of Reilly.

You can catch the trailer here.

The Great Jane Espenson has an interesting post on the difference between writing jokes for 30-minute sitcoms and hour-long shows:

Half-hour comedies favor what are called “hard jokes.” Here’s an example of a hard joke, which I adapted from an old episode of Family Ties:

JENNIFER: I told you to run a down-and-in. You were supposed to go to the pole and stop!

SKIPPY: I did. I stopped when I hit the pole.

You’ll notice that it’s very structured, very lean, and it’s all about the words. The set-up HAS to have the words “pole” and “stop” for the punch line to land.

The distinction between this and a soft joke isn’t as clear-cut as some writers would have you believe. The same punch line, if spoken with a self-aware wince, would be at home in many comedic hours.

Take out the constructed-sounding wordplay to soften it further. Now can you imagine it in an episode of House?

INJURED PLAYER: I was supposed to stop at the goal post but I didn’t.

Dr. HOUSE (examining contusion): Actually, I suspect you did.

The simple fact that House makes a dry joke of it makes it softer. This is another example of that general principle which I’ve laid out before: broadly comedic characters tend to be serious in their intent. More complex, “dramatic” characters are often consciously making a joke. It’s my favorite writing irony.

Saw it yesterday and have some semi-spoileresque thoughts. Please don’t read on if you don’t want spoilers.

***

First of all, it’s pretty good. I haven’t read the McCarthy novel, so if you’re a devotee of his, you might have a very different outlook on the film as an adaptation. But taken just by itself, it’s a fine piece of moviemaking and one that I suspect will improve on repeated viewing.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

* Tommy Lee Jones deserves an Oscar for his performance. Or maybe a Grammy for “spoken word,” because what he does in No Country he does almost entirely with his voice. That may not sound like much, but he’s given terse, old-timey Texas words and he delivers them like poetry, only believably. It’s kind of amazing. (In particular, Jones is saddled with the movie’s opening voice-over narration. It’s so hard to keep this device from looking like a device, and the script he’s working off of here would sound really precious coming out of anyone else’s mouth. He delivers it perfectly.

* There’s no score. Until the closing credits roll, the only music in the entire movie is from a mariachi band that walks through the frame at one point. After the movie was over, I found myself keenly aware of how manipulative music can be in the hands of filmmakers who use it to try to spark in viewers emotions that their camera and story can’t fully evoke.

* Also, the soundscape is pretty wonderful and made all the more so because of the lack of background music.

* God bless Stephen Root. Is he the most talented guy in Hollywood never to make it really big? I say, maybe yes.

* Kelly Macdonald–you know her from Gosford Park is from fracking Scotland. Here she pulls off a pitch-perfect trailer-trash housefrau. All shades of awesome.

* There’s a scene where Josh Brolin is being chased across the open range at night and there’s a flash of purple lightening in the distance. It’s stunning. Either cinematographer Roger Deakins got unbelievably lucky, or this is the best, least obtrusive, use of CGI this year.

* Anton Chiguhr really is as iconic a character as everyone says. And my favorite bit of writing for him is the scene where he shows up in the gas station, flips a coin, and tells the old proprietor to call it, heads or tails. You’ve seen this in the trailers, friend-o. Well this is the first time in the movie he flips a coin for someone’s life and the off-the-shelf way to write the character is to have Chiguhr kill the first person whose life he flips for. This establishes him as the heavy. (Again, SPOILERS!) Instead, the fellow in the gas station calls it right and gets to live. And if anything, it serves to make Chiguhr scarier and more interesting. It’s a great writing decision.

* There’s a key scene at the end that takes place entirely off-camera. The movie-geek websites have been debating whether or not this is a cheat or too self-conscious. For me it really works. A lot of things in No Country take place off-camera. In fact, nearly every important plot-point does. (That’s one reason I think the movie is probably going to age well.) This big, off-screen payoff feels perfectly in keeping with the rest of the movie.

* Yes, there is one coda too many. But only one. And no flying saucers appear. So that’s something.

* Ummmm, where’s John Goodman?

* I won’t be surprised if No Country and There Will Be Blood are the two heavy Oscar favorites.

Update: Ross Douthat complains that Tommy Lee Jones shouldn’t get an Oscar for No Country because he’s the third (or fourth or fifth) best performance in the movie. I’d both agree and disagree with him. Josh Brolin should get at least a nom, and Javier Bardem deserves one, too–but I’d put both of them in the Lead Actor category. Jones’s performance was, to me, anyway, a supporting role, albeit one that anchored part of the film. Brolin and Bardem are also fabulous.

Also, the further I get from No Country, the more I like it.

I’ve been hearing ads on the radio for this for the last few days. You can click through the link if you want, but I’ll save you the trouble: It’s Armando Montelongo’s detailed blueprint on how to make a fortune . . . flipping real estate!

Armando’s page advertises a free DVD but doesn’t tip us off to how much his “system” will eventually cost. This site suggests the package will ultimately cost $997.

Are there really people that stupid out there? Wait, don’t answer that . . .