OiNK is dead, R.I.P. OiNK

I have no words to describe how the death of OiNK makes me feel, so I will share what some others have said:

Paraphrased Wikipedia: Copyright agencies described Oink as an online pirate pre-release music club; former users described it as one of the world’s largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. There were around 180,000 members at the time of closure and all of their avatars had to be cute.

“If you’re not familiar with Oink, here’s a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site – to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away.”

[Read the rest on: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.]

…and it wasn’t just me:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent Reznor: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

[the rest of the interview is on: Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK]

Joss Whedon writes Buffy Season 8 (!)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer will continue where season 7 left off this March…in a comic book.

Joss Whedon is writing the first story arc and says that the series will be “canon in the Buffy-verse”. Some of the other writers will be Brian K. Vaughan, Jeph Loeb, Brad Meltzer, Jane Espenson, Drew Goddard, Drew Greenberg and Steven DeKnight. You might recognize some of those names from the Television show. The art for the comic will be by Georges Jeanty, and I hope to like it half as much as Karl Moline’s art from Fray.

Alfonso Cuarón and the Children of Men. [8.75/10]

Children of Men (91% fresh?!) is worth watching, but the hype might be a bit much…storywise it’s good, but not great. That said, I would still rate it [8.75/10] (which is still a way off from 9.1 on my rating scale.) Visually it’s excellent…the camerawork is amazing and the futurescape is completely believable. I want to watch it again just to pay attention to how it was made.

Also: this interview with Alfonso Cuarón was well worth my time. He’s a great director…I really liked Y Tu Mama Tambien and his Harry Potter was the first good one in that series. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Joss Whedon’s new project: Goners

Why did I have to randomly encounter this in a comment on a blog? It should be news.

Joss Whedon quotes about a new project:

“It takes place now so I don’t have to build a universe, but it’s not a movie without fantasy. Everything I do is fantasy. I love fantasy.”
“It’s the story of a young woman’s journey that involves a great deal of horror and some heroics… It’s certainly darker than Serenity and there are a lot of left turns along the way. It is something I had in mind for a while, and it just poured out of me when I finished Serenity.”
“It ventures more into the horrific than I normally tend to. I love horror movies, but I looked back on Buffy and I was like ‘Oh, we forgot to make it scary.’ It was occasionally scary, but I got so wrapped up in the emotions and people and things that I missed the horror aspect. Goners comes back to that a little bit.”
“It is a story in the mode of finding strength. “
“What I will say is that it ventures more into the horrific than I normally tend to.”
“It’s a completely new work that does take place in the modern world. Needless to say, slightly left of center. It’s a different adventure, and it’s kind of a horror film. It’s dark. It’s not nihilistic, but there’s a very ugly side to humanity going on in it. It takes place in the modern world, it’s just a part of the modern world most people don’t get to see.”
“It is a fantasy thriller, it is pretty dark and it’s all me. So people will pretty much know what that means if they look at my body of work. But it’s a new universe set in the present day with a new concept for me and a new bunch of characters.”
“Goners is a movie with a lot of beautiful inspirational human stuff but it’s also a horror movie. Ultimately it’s about a darker place in all of us.”