BoingBoing points out this pullquote (from an actual Boston Globe review) on the cover of an illegal Eternal Sunshine DVD in their Crappy Bootleg DVD Flickr pool, prompting the holographic representation of MPAA pirate hunter emeritus Jack Valenti to appear suddenly beside a sidewalk vendor in downtown Los Angeles and issue this statement: "I say to you that the unauthorized use of hilariously misapplied review copy on substandard, contraband DVD cover art is to legitimate entertainment industry concerns as the fiery meatus of Satan's infernal member is to the pristine hindquarters of an otherwise naked altar boy bending over to tie his shoes."

BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin, interstellar blogger sent from fifteen minutes in the future to report back on the tech-follies of humans, goes spycam hunting in downtown LA for Wired, finding a few of the $186,000 worth of invisible eyes that the MPAA gifted to the LAPD to crack down on the pirated DVD trade. When the roving cameras identify an illegal transaction taking place, a holographic image of legendary MPAA pirate-hunter Jack Valenti is projected down to the street. The virtual Valenti then attempts to confuse and intimidate the misguided consumer into discontinuing the transaction with a soliloquy comparing the disrespecting of copyrights to one of twelve disturbing scenarios, like "lashing your 12-year old daughter to the buffet in the preteen-rapist ward at a hospital for the criminally insane."

Johnny Ray Gasca, the arrested movie pirate who eluded the FBI for a year after giving his lawyer the slip while awaiting trial, was finally caught in Florida yesterday. According to today's LAT story on Gasca's capture, being a wildly successful bootlegger requires a seemingly total absence of taste, as Gasca was nabbed recording screenings of The Core and Anger Management. Here, MPAA chief Dan Glickman crows about the collar:

As if it wasn't bad enough that new, vanilla MPAA head Dan Glickman has to suffer through the inevitable, unfavorable comparisons to Jack Valenti, his swashbuckling, dashingly demented, and poetic predecessor, Glickman, a Democrat straight out of Clinton's cabinet, has to prove that he can swing both ways:

· "Glickman, a former congressman who took the job after Jack Valenti retired last year, calls piracy 'a potential dagger poised at the heart of the motion picture industry.'" It's so nice that some of Valenti's poetic soul is finally rubbing off on the Glickster.
· PoweR girl Lizzie Grubman gets busted planting a gossip item on Lindsay Lohan. Guess she's still getting the hang of being on camera all of the time. Good thing she didn't have a show when she was learning how drive her SUV in the Hamptons, eh? [second item]
· Michael Jackson's learning, albeit slowly. Sure, he showed up to court late and in tears from his "back pain," but at least his handlers got him out of his jammies this time.
· The Genies (the Canadian Oscars) are being held tonight, and forgive us for sounding like an ugly American for saying so, but doesn't the Genie statue look like something that Oscar would fuck in in the bathroom of the Abbey and never call again for being too clingy? We're just sayin'.

· At the ShoWest conference in Vegas, MPAA head Dan Glickman thanks foreign film markets for making even the most egregious of Hollywood's bombs reach profitability. In an unrelated note, we really loved Glickman's work as the Tall Man in the Phantasm movies (pic at left). [THR]
· Kenneth Branagh decides to steer his career into startlingly uncharted waters by directing an adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It. [Variety]
· Whoops! Look like we were wrong about all of the actors in Hollywood being used up for pilots. Donald Sutherland, Gina Gershon, George Wendt, and Roger Daltrey fill in some of the casting cracks. [THR]
· New Line buys the rights to the upcoming Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% a True Story, in which the writer visits the sites of infamous rock-star demises. Let's see if they can get Philip Seymour Hoffman to play Klosterman. [Variety]
· A quick reminder of a controversy that had the country's panties in a painful bunch, but which now we can barely remember: The FCC rules that Nicolette Sheridan's Monday Night Football skit was not indecent. Which, we suppose, makes it decent. [THR]

· Even with their corporate masters cracking the whip and demanding more, more, more, the Sideways-boosted Fox Searchlight will make fewer movies this year. [Variety]
· MPAA Head Pirate Hunter in Charge Dan Glickman tours the "crime-ridden black market-areas" of Mexico City in an effort to crack down on piracy south of the border. Luckily, there have been no reports of Glickman firing pistols at poverty-stricken sidewalk vendors selling unauthorized DVD copies from dirty blankets. Yet. [THR]
· Fox Animation gets the rights to Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, which much to the chagrin of the Geisel estate, will promptly be retitled Rupert Hears a Who. Hey, that's what happens when you deal with Hollywood. [Variety]
· Hey, did you hear the one about pilot season? Ellen Burstyn, Alan Ruck, John Francis Daley join pilot casts. [THR]
· "Thanks to a vote Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Hollywood is one small step closer to seeing the camcording of a film declared a federal crime." Whether the crime should be punished by firing squad or by mere genital mutilation is yet to be determined, however. [Variety]

After completing a rigorous apprenticeship learning the most arcane of the pirate-hunting arts at the feet of master Jack Valenti, MPAA chief Dan Glickman has finally gained the power over life and death. We congratulate Glickman on mastering the complicated voodoo charm that resulted in his first long-distance kill; after all, it takes weeks of stirring the blood of an albino orphan to get the consistency for the pentagram-drawing paint just right. A lesser pirate-hunter would've paid someone in the Aryan Brotherhood with a carton of Marlboro Reds and a copy of Swank to snuff the guy with a pillow, but not Glickman. He's got appreciation for craft.

· Iraq war documentary Gunner Palace wins an appeal with the MPAA, earns the title of Most. Profane. PG-13. Movie. Ever. [Variety]
· Everyone works during pilot season, part 100: Tiffani "Don't call me Amber" Thiessen is cast in CBS sitcom pilot Stroller Wars. [THR]
· HBO moves Six Feet Under to Monday nights just to watch broadcast network execs shit their pants. [Variety]
· Poker no longer red hot: Debra Messing joins Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana in the Curtis Hanson poker flick Lucky You. [THR]
· Just in time to sustain the industry's feel-good vibe from the Oscars, the MPAA announces more lawsuits against movie downloaders and file sharers. This might just be a rumor, but we've heard that Dan Glickman is going to castrate one of the pirates right after the "Recently Dead" montage in the Oscar telecast, then feed his balls to a ceremonial MGM lion. [Variety]

With all of the effort that the MPAA put into efforts to stop awards-season movie screeners from leaking onto the Internet (like suing pirates back into the Betamax era and issueing magical DVD players that can only play enchanted discs), you'd think that movie piracy had finally been stomped out. But we can't declare a Golden Age of Respected Copyrights just yet. Waxy.org has compiled a list of every Oscar-nominated film and the date on which intellectual-property-raping pirates leaked their booty onto the Net. Waxy claims that only five nominees escaped uploading, but reader comments in the post reduce that number to one: The Phantom of the Opera, a movie Joel Schumacher couldn't pay anyone to steal.

The eminently quotable Jack Valenti has given us so much this year: tales of rape-thristy pirates, visions of evil elves, and controversial opinions on cinema. Continuing to give until it hurts, Valenti euthanizes Old Man 2004 and welcomes the New Year's bouncing baby with this memorable ghost story in Esquire's January "What I've Learned" issue, on newsstands now:

If suing copyright-disrespecting scofflaws back into the Betamax era isn't going to solve the problem of movie piracy, the studios (no doubt operating from the MPAA's pamphlet How to Use the Major Media to Get the Public to Feel Our Pain) are going to try a different tactic: spinning tales of poetic justice.

We've heard that the MPAA has once again summoned its team of heroic, pirate-hating lawyers for a fresh round of litigation against movie file-sharers (or as we like to call them, its customers), and the piping-hot lawsuits should be arriving sometime soon...like tomorrow. It seems that last month's opening round of legal intimidation somehow failed to immediately cease the scourge of movie piracy, necessitating this coming larger-scale offensive. We think we know why the earlier suits haven't driven downloaders to more savory expressions of their respect for copyrights: The idea of "lawsuits" is too abstract. How scary can a piece of paper with a bunch of big words on it be? If tomorrow's expected action fails to solve the problem once and for all, we recommend that the MPAA randomly select nine "example" pirates and nail one to each letter of the Hollywood sign. That would grab the attention of America's broadband-wielding scofflaws a lot more effectively than some stationary with Dan Glickman's signature on it.

This supposed, hatchet-burying epistle from former MPAA head/pirate-hunter-in-twilight Jack Valenti to longtime nemesis Oliver Stone is sure to provide pullquote fodder ("Brilliant!" "Engaging and enticing!" "ALEXANDER...hammered...with a bad rap!") for whatever advertising Warner Bros. wastes on Alexander as it fades away into the annals of epic flop history. We can't be sure that the letter is authentic, so click on the above image and enjoy with all of the healthy skepticism you'd reserve for anything signed by Hollywood's legendary, elf-harboring, buccaneer-baiting former chief lobbyist.

· Viacom agrees to a $3.5 million buggering over outstanding indecency fines, which doesn't include the world of pain the FCC has yet to rain down over the Janet Jackson incident. To show his gratitude for the "settlement," Viacom co-president/future galactic emperor Les Moonves plans on leaving a severed breast left in FCC chairman Michael Powell's bed. And that's just for starters. [THR]
· The MPAA upholds the NC-17 rating on Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education because "they're just not into the gay sex thing." [THR]
· Robert Downey Jr. joins Tim Allen in the Shaggy Dog remake. We'll all understand if Downey falls off the wagon to get through this one. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Universal writes the names of all of its 2005 films on little pieces of paper, throws them up in the air, then reschedules their release dates according to where they land on a calendar on the floor. [Variety]
· Former Academy member Carmine Caridi fined $600K for pirating movie screeners. In addition to the severe financial penalty, the judge left open the possibility that MPAA pirate-hunter-at-large Jack Valenti can beat the bottom of Caridi's feet with bamboo sticks until he calls Valenti his "copyright daddy." [Variety]

We've received yet another report of intrusive preview screening anti-piracy practices, this time hitting WGA members out for a night viewing Joel Schumacher's latest exploration of his mask fetish. We creep ever closer to the day where an affirmative answer to the question "Are you on the list?" is immediately followed up with a brusque, "Grab your ankles, and please don't yelp when you feel the cold latex."

A reader sends in yet another account of a paranoia-tinged screening. From the sound of last night's over-the-top security measures, it won't be long before the body-cavity search becomes a regular part of the preview experience—who knows what kind of recording equipment someone might have "accidentally" fallen on before the movie? We suggest viewers learn some anal Kegel exercises to prepare for this inevitability, with a self-administered, rubber glove dry-run in between sets.

The MPAA, shrewdly sensing that their customers desperately want to be sued to kill time in their empty lives while they await the next Spider-man sequel, launched the first wave of lawsuits against movie file-sharers yesterday. Way to go, MPAA! The music industry's similar lawsuits against their consumer base has ushered in a new Golden Age of CD sales, and we're sure that your adoption of their strategy will inevitably result in every American buying an average of two movie tickets per day.