Modern Family

Modern Family is easily the best launch so far this season (not, mind you, that we have a lot of shows under our belt so far). It’s a single-camera, three-family show. Really, one extended family with three separate segments – a typical family cursed with an obnoxious wanna-be-hip dad (the least fun part of it, he’s just tiring to watch), the husband and wife with a big age spread (older husband; not every show this year is Accidentally on Purpose or Cougartown), and the husband-and-husband couple with a new baby. This show is very human. The people are spirited, well-intentioned, but flawed in real ways

It could go very wrong. The age spread, the gay parents, there is a lot of space for being very cheap and off. But it is well-intentioned, all pro-human. It’s also very of-the-moment in some ways.

However, this was all set-up. We’ll see the path that it takes. But the older guy who knows he’s the older guy and isn’t pretending otherwise; the new parents who need to focus a little less on what people perceive them as doing and focus more on what they are doing, the young boy whose romantic ability is far outstripped by his intentions… there’s a good base here.

(One thing I’m finding nice is the slight racial spread in the family. The other day, I was in the room with some extended family, and let’s just say that it wasn’t very monochromatic. Which is not to say that other family gatherings of mine aren’t very monochromatic, they certainly are, but looking around I’m seeing that racial solidity of families seems to be fraying ever more. Probably a good thing, certainly a real thing, and handled reasonably here.)

the forgotten

Unidentified corpses. It’s a very serious thing. Very, very serious. And in case you forget it, the forgotten will drill it into you every seventeen seconds. Every single shot is made using colors that are very dark and serious. And with the corpse in question narrating, you cannot escape the import of it all.

Now that they’ve convinced you it’s important, if only they could also convince you it’s interesting…

Deja & Vu

In  Dharma & Greg, Jenna Elfman played a woman who quickly found herself living with a man who was very different from her, but whom she had real affection for. The series was about how their affection overrode their differences, and how their worlds collided.

In Accidentally on Purpose, Jenna Elfman plays a woman who quickly finsd herself living with a man who is very different from her, but whom she has real affection for. The series appears to be about how their affection override their differences, and how their worlds collide.

In this case, Jenna is the relatively strait-laced one, on account of her greater age, which is the official key difference between the two of them. An impending child is the thing that officially holds them together. In terms of personality… well, he’s a bit of a cliche youth, and her personality isn’t fully fleshed out in this too-frentic pilot. Really, it’s hard to tell how this is going to be. Jenna can be funny, but the first episodes is all set-up, no play-out.

The pilot was directed by Pamela Fryman, airing after Ms. Fryman’s usual gig on How I Met Your Mother. I’m not sure how many episodes they have her on for; if she can bring some of the HIMYM zing to this, it can work out.

Fryman directed the second episode of Elfman’s previous sitcom, Courting Alex, following on the heels of the first episode’s director, James Burrows. In a way, I suspect she’s going to follow in his footsteps altogether. He was for a long-time the go-to guy to launch a new series as a director, sometimes being there for just one episode, sometimes staying on for a few. Launched some big successes… even if the pilot wasn’t that great (The Big Bang Theory). Recently, he’s been spending most of his time on the script-weak Gary Unmarried, and he’s launching the new Kelsey Grammer series, but all in all it looks like he’s slowing his pace a little (and at 69, and with something on the scale of 1000 episodes under his belt, he’s earned it!), and Fryman’s work is very much in his tradition. She’s shown the ability to build chemistry. Let’s hope it works on this show.

Bad assumptions about the Kirby situation

I’m seeing so many wrong statements about the Jack Kirby estate rights reclamation online, often in the midst of conversations laden with a thick sauce of stupidity or mere self-centeredness. I reckoned that, rather than wading repeatedly into the stupid I’d address them here, where I can steer people who have questions.

Please note that I am making no claim about whether the Kirbys will succeed in their attempt, nor about whether the works in question were legitimately “work made for hire”. Most of the vital facts to answering those questions occurred before I was born. The relevant agreements  are not things that I am expert on…a statement that, it would seem, also applies to most of the people commenting on the situation. Also, and let me make this loud: I am not a lawyer. I am a layman who has to deal with copyrights frequently as part of his work, but I make no claim of complete knowledge nor claim that anything said here cannot be in error. This post is not legal advice.

1. The Kirby family is suing a bunch of companies. No, at least not yet. The Kirby family has let people know that they’re reclaiming the copyrights. There may be lawsuits down the road, particularly if the companies do not agree that the Kirbys have proper claim to these rights, but no lawsuits yet.
2. They’re only doing it now, instead of years ago, because of the success the Siegels have had with the Superman cases. No – the law only allows copyright to be recaptured in this way during certain periods (relative to the original creation/publication of the material.) They could not have done this years ago.
3. They’re only doing it right now because of the Disney buyout of Marvel. For that to be true, everything would have had to have been prepared in the last two weeks. With all the characters and companies involved, it stretches the imagination to believe it was pulled together in two weeks, particularly since there’s no obvious reason not to take a couple months rather than rush it, if that’s what triggered it.
4. If you create something for a comics company, it’s work-for-hire. You can do work-for-hire for a comics company, but not all work done for a comics company is work-for-hire.
5. The Kirby heirs should have no rights, since they didn’t create the characters. And 20th Century Fox, Sony, and Disney created the characters?
6. “Work For Hire” didn’t even exist as a concept before the 1976 change in copyright law. Actually, “work made for hire”, which is the actual phrase in the 1976 law, goes back to the 1909 copyright law. What did change in the 1976 act is that it could be applied to freelancers; previous law granted work made for hire status only to a “employer”, which meant that the worker had to be an “employee”… and there is some precedential rulings that make it hard to claim typical freelance work as qualifying.
7. Kirby signed a document in the 1980s saying that the work was work for hire, therefor it is work for hire. No, it’s not that simple. It takes more than saying “it’s work for hire” to make something work for hire (for example, current law is explicit that you can’t just declare something WFH after the fact). I’m not saying that there can’t be anything in that document (which I’ve not read) which would have an impact (say, if it includes Kirby agreeing that the material had been intended to be WFH at the time of creation). As it is, I’ve not seen the document he signed (not the one they asked him to sign, the 4-pager that folks were protesting against, but the shorter one he actually signed). Have you?
8. They can’t claim any copyright in Thor. Thor is a Norse god in the public domain. Yes, Thor the Norse god is in the public domain. The interpretation of Thor with a Kirby-designed outfit, who slams his hammer against the floor and turns into Donald Blake? Not so public domain. Think of it this way – Santa Claus is in the public domain, but that just means that you can make your own drawing of Santa Claus. You can’t copy mine, it belongs to me. You can do a story about Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, but not of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
9. If they stop these folks from using the characters in their comics, they’re ruining Jack’s legacy. Actually, Jack wasn’t that interested in having other people use his characters; he thought the talented folks should be creating their own concepts. Having said that – if they get ownership of the characters, it seems quite likely that they’ll arrange for someone to do comics, much as they’ve arranged for new comics featuring the characters the estate already owns.
10. They should also be suing DC for the characters Kirby created there. Again, these are not suits, they’re reclamations. And the most notable Kirby’s DC creations (the Fourth World material, The Demon) are too new for them to be legally reclaimed this way yet.
11. Kirby knew the rules when he made the material, and that should be adhered to. It’s hard to see how that argument can be wielded without saying that Marvel knew the rules and should stick to it as well – and under the rules of the time, Marvel would be ceding their copyright after 56 years anyway.
12. (This is one where I feel the need to quote a specific message verbatim.) Comics were better when they were being done by employees, I hope McFarlane and all his kind rot in hell for screwing this industry. Comics have not been primarily done by employees since before Todd McFarlane was born.
13. Kirby was screwed and the courts should award the Kirbys the rights./Marvel treated Kirby fairly, so the court will find for them. Certainly, it is understandable that the fans are concerned over who got treated fairly, and for all I know, that may be part of the motivator of the family’s attempt to recapture the rights (if they’d been getting a cut all along, there would be less motivation to recapture.) However, should the recapture situation end up in court, the case won’t be about the fairness of the past; this is not about redressing past wrongs, but about who controls the copyrights for the future. The cases would likely hinge on such questions as whether the original work was “work made for hire” (largely a question of whether Kirby was an employee), whether the termination was appropriately applied for (every explanation I’ve seen of the process has indicated that it is rife with opportunity for error), and whether the works now being produced qualify as derivative works based on Kirby’s material. Even if Marvel had been paying the Kirby family $10 million a year since 1961, that wouldn’t change the Kirbys’ legal right to recapture the copyrights. (Which is not to say that there might not be an attempt to pull on heartstrings in court; some light does occasionally seep around the edges of the blindfold of Justice, but that won’t be the heart of the matter.)
14. This is against the capitalist form that the founding fathers set up and that has made this country great. Such claims take a rather blindfolded view of the founding fathers and their view on intellectual property. They did not see it as some sort of permanent grant to corporations; the Constitution specifies that Congress could secure “for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”. It wasn’t until 1909 that it was codified that a corporation could be an “Author”. And even if a corporation could claim copyright, under the first copyright laws of this country, Marvel would have lost any copyright claim on that early 1960s material about a third of a century ago.
15. If Jack wanted this, he would have filed this case when he was alive. He couldn’t file this case, no. There are only certain times when one can reclaim the copyright. Jack died too early to do this himself.

I’m sure I’ll be adding to this message as new Internet conversations pop up. If you find anything that needs correction, post them as a comment here. Your comment may not show up immediately (I hand-sort things for spam), but I’ll see it and, if I think proper, address it in the post.

(Note: I did remove one note about the length of the copyright term where I realized that I may have misparsed some relevant dates. The copyright length for US material from 1963 is limited to 95 years under current law, regardless of the length of the creator’s life. It may have some effect on the length of these copyrights overseas, I don’t really know.)

Topics: NPH, and also awesomeness

One of the interesting things about watching Neil Patrick Harris host the Emmy Awards last night, in addition to seeing a job well done, is that I’ve watched the building to this moment. Because of some vague personal linkage to the Doogie Hauser concept, I’ve long been NPH-aware. He was one of those guys who would make me smile when he showed up in smalller places, both because of kindly existing thoughts and because he’d do a good job.

At some point, there seems to have been a decision to be an awards host… and however one pushes these things, a very good job was done. I watched him climb the ladder of award shows quite quickly, from some magician awards a year or so back, to the TV Land Awards, to Tony, to Emmy. It’s like he played one game of high school baseball and was recruited to college after one game, then the minor leagues after one game there, and a week later he’s playing for the Dodgers. A rapid rise (I expect there were even smaller, possibly non-televised awards before the ones that I saw), and no reason for anyone who boosted him to regret what they’d done (well, I’ll make a minor expection for that cringy moment when NPH insulted the Globetrotters after they helped with a gag).

There were a lot of little stupidities in the show, of course (wadda ya mean Jon Cryer’s a supporting actor? He’s 40% of the title!) and some parts worth skipping (thank goodness for the decision to clump all of “reality” together, and for DVRs!), and even celebrities I like took too much time making the awards about themselves when they were just presenting, but… all worth it, especially for NPH. And Doctor Horrible was there as well! Hoo!

Next year, it’s gotta be NPH on the Oscars. And the year after that, they have to invent the Awesomeness awards, just to let him have some place to go!

Glee take two

I gave Glee a second chance. It did not deserve it.

Community

The new series Community has a good idea for a setting, a community college, a site where people may have aspirations and drive but not perhaps the full set of talents needed to achieve those goals.  It’s a filmed series built around a group of aspiring losers, a descriptor which may invoke Arrested Development, but the more apt comparison is Knights of Prosperity at best, perhaps In Case of Emergency. Clearly, the goal is to have our losers be lovable, or at least interesting, but they don’t really achieve that.

The central character is a hustler, trying to cheat his way through life, and not proving perfectly competent at it. He leads a study group, and converts everyone to his hustling goals… for no discernable reason. Apparently, no one actually wants to learn. We don’t understand what these people actually want, they’re there to be awkward souls for each other to make fun of.

About the only character I ended up liking in the show is the professor played by The Daily Show‘s John Oliver… although I think most of that likability comes from Oliver himself, rather than the writing.

I was looking forward to this one. I’ll probably watch a few more, but for now I’m suspecting that my ope was not well placed.

Sign that your broadcast network strategy is a failure

Mour sitcom goes into reruns on Nick at Nite… and immediately gets higher ratings than it did when you broadcast new episodes.

The Vampire Diaries

This year, I am not promising to review every new show. Between a new baby and a looming deadline, ife is full. So I can look at some show and decide that it is far too unlikely to be for me, and skip it.

That was my instinct for The Vampire Diaries. After all, look, it was on teenville The CW, with “vampire” in the title. How good could it be? But then I kicked myself, for years ago, there was another show with “vampire” in the title, on a forerunner of The CW. It had even less going for it, as it was a continuation of a bad movie. Had I used that as the source of my wisdom, I’d have missed Buffy, and my word would have been less for it. So I watched The Vampire Diaries first episode via online streaming. It was exactly the show that I expected it to be. Brooding good-guy vampire falls for a himan, but badguy vampires cause problems. For teenage girls in Twilight withdrawal, here’s your ose. For those who want an ounce of cleverness or originality, look elsewhere. I cly shall!ertain

Crossword time

I did this Saturday’s puzzle in 8 minutes, 1 second. Just posting here to keep track of my record time.