Blu-Ray hasn’t sold as much as expected.

There wasn’t enough of a qualitative difference between the picture offered by an upconverted DVD and that of a Blu-ray disc. Sure, analysts and reviewers can tell the difference (most of the time), but it isn’t a significant enough difference to make viewers sit up and take notice. It wasn’t like the jump from VCRs to DVD players or from giant tube TVs to flat screens.

via Why Has Blu-ray Failed to Catch Hold? – FoxNews.com.

OnDemand/PPV/Streaming/Downloadable movies on Widescreen HD displays. That’s why.

It’s amazing how little money and fame change people. You are who you are and money only multiplies it. Cash will only make you smarter, if you were interested in being smarter in the first place. I give it five years before we see this dude mud-wrestling with NeNe on Celebrity Weight-Loss Challenge.

via Especially the Blacks and the Jews – Culture – The Atlantic

It’s not really that amazing. What was Sheen being paid for?

Through “Two and a Half Men”, CBS, Warner Bros. and Creator Chuck Lorre rewarded Sheen for his off set behavior from the show’s inception. The character he plays, a sexist, drug abusing, carousing, alcoholic, prostitute hiring ne’er do well bachelor was “built around” Sheen. Around, because Sheen, unlike his character, also was accused of domestic abuse (physical and verbal) by girlfriends, ex-wives and porn actress/escorts.

After the all types of incidents, an unhealthy Sheen prone to sexist and racist rants, was given a healthy raise. What about that says: stop doing what you are doing, it’s screwing up your life? CBS and Lorre were happy to have a train wreck inside their studios as long as they could syndicate a milquetoast version of the carnage.

The folks at CBS and Warner Bros. aren’t the only ones who, until recently, had no problem with Charlie Sheen being Charlie Sheen. Because of millions of viewers every week, “Two and a Half Men” was a top show on prime time TV and is the top rated show in syndication. This guarantees Sheen a payday through 2021. I don’t even think this includes international broadcasting where in some countries, the show is named what translates to “My Uncle Charlie” or “My Cool Uncle Charlie”. People watch it, even if none of them knows Coates. It’s not just the viewing public either, talent and staff associated with the show have been nominated and won awards sponsored by their fans, peers and critics for work in front of and behind the camera.

Lorre, CBS and Warner Bros. reacted to Sheen’s personal and professional attacks against them, but they accommodated Sheen’s often illegal behavior elsewhere. Lorre’s petty and childish use of his trademark vanity cards to belittle Sheen make him seem like someone who naively expected to enjoy Charlie Harper without ever suffering Charlie Sheen.

TNC is sick of the celebrity profile that begins with a super-fit beautiful actress eating a nice big meal perfect for a “Real Murkin”:

On the journalism of this, first. The scene where the reporter and star eat together should be banished from all of magazines. I’m sure I’ve done it before, and it’s not wrong if it serves some higher purpose, or if something interesting truly get says. But usually the point is to prove the star’s accessibility, that they’re–in fact–just like you. Which they are not.

via I’ll Just Have a Salad – Ta-Nehisi Coates – Culture – The Atlantic.

The point for the star’s PR team is to prove “their accessibility”. I would guess the point for some journalists could be the perk of text-ing their closest friends: “I am eating brunch with the sexiest woman alive!” or they could have shown up at the interview and the actress requested they start the interview over a meal. The point for the actress may be that she has an eating disorder or image issues she wants to mask or she actually does want to bust a grub. Either way, I am not going to say what the point “usually” is, because I haven’t been around enough A-List actresses to even take a guess.

Jonathan Crowe’s Map Room flags a book about tiny islands.

Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands is generating a lot of buzz — if nothing else, reviews keep turning up in my Google alerts. Subtitled Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will, the short book pairs hand-illustrated maps of the islands with short essays about them by Schalansky that from the reviews sound, shall we say, bigger than reality.

via The Map Room: Atlas of Remote Islands.

In her official capacity to tell commoners which people were the most fascinating in the last calendar year, Barbara Walters released a commercial letting us know that Betty White made the list. In the ad, Walters asks White “at 88 and three quarters… does one still have sex?” I just found my self thinking: shouldn’t you know?

(Courtesy Back to the Future: Eric Stoltz – Hollywood Reporter)