This movie isn’t constructed, as most thrillers are, to get us from point A to point B as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. “Vertigo” instead circles compulsively around a set of visual and verbal (and musical) motifs — spirals, towers, bouquets, the words “too late” — which keep bringing us back to the same places, turning us in relentlessly on ourselves. There’s a wonderful scene in which Scottie follows Madeleine through the dizzying streets of San Francisco to his own home. He looks puzzled, utterly disoriented, and the viewer knows exactly how he feels.

Rafferty also makes this sophisticated point:

Seeing “Vertigo” on DVD is maybe a shade less overwhelming, less deranging, than seeing it as its first audience did, but it has the compensating quality of seeming a more solitary and more intimate experience, and this is, always has been, a movie that makes you want to be alone with it.

I don’t agree, though; I think the film was made to create a mass hallucinatory effect, and Hitchcock was not, of course, making a movie for home viewing. I was working in San Francisco in the 1990s, when Harris and Katz’s restoration of the film had its world premiere at the magnificent and huge Castro Theater. (My former colleague Michael Sragow’s exhaustive history of the film’s creation and restoration is here.) The film played, night after sold-out night, and I don’t think anyone who was there will forget the exhilarating, disconcerting experience.

The world Finke lives in can be slightly unhinged; but it must be noted her Sunday box office analyses are earlier and more comprehensive than anything else I’m aware of. It’s 2 p.m. PDT right now, and even Box Office Mojo doesn’t have a full analysis up. (Finke’s is time-stamped at 2 a.m.)

Isn’t this the purview of the LAT? The AP wire on latimes.com I link to above is warm beer; Finke’s piece is smarter, based on better knowledge, and brings up a number of important tangential issues. (The paper will be particularly embarrassed if Finke is right and What Happens in Vegas ends up passing Speed Racer for second place once the final figures for the weekend are released Monday.) In what new-media universe does the LAT get outclassed on a basic housekeeping coverage of a hometown industry like this?

As for the Speed Racer debacle, it seems as if the Wachowskis hung themselves with a too-long movie based on a too-little-beloved bit of kitsch. The wonderment I found in the animation wasn’t shared by other critics made restless by the two-hour-plus running time, not to mention the families at whom the thing was directed. I’ve seen figures from $120 million to $160 million listed as the film’s production budget; throw in marketing costs and Fox is dependent on the kindness of a whole lot of overseas strangers to get out of the way of a potential category 5 flop.

Nobody else did.

Joe Morgenstern in the WSJ:

This toxic admixture of computer-generated frenzy and live-action torpor succeeds in being, almost simultaneously, genuinely painful — the esthetic equivalent of needles in eyeballs — and weirdly benumbing, like eye candy laced with lidocaine. “The Matrix” gave us the trippy pleasure of bullet time, a super-slo-mo vision of the world. “Speed Racer” gives us the paradox of a drive time that’s super-fast and all but interminable.

Carina Chocano in the LAT:

It’s hard to imagine a movie better suited to the aesthetic tastes of an addled 8-year-old boy than “Speed Racer,” or one worse suited to his attention span.Unless, of course, he enjoys speechifying.For a movie about speed and forward momentum, “Speed Racer” provides very little of either, though it does explode into spurts of frenetic, confusing and hard-to-follow action — and that’s just on the racetracks.

M. Sragow in the Baltimore Sun:

Despite the warmth and humor of Goodman and Sarandon, the family-circle gags are groaners. Although the Wachowskis tap into the collective unconsciousness of roadside culture, what they deliver at best are expensive cheap thrills - bumper cars put on rollercoasters.
[…]
The only hope for this movie is that its vibrant hues will hypnotize youngsters the way Technicolor did their great-grandparents. The Wachowskis fail at creating “fun for the whole family.” In Speed Racer, their tricks are for kids.

A.O. Scott:

The childhood experience the Wachowskis evoke is not the easy delight of lolling in the den watching one cartoon after another, but rather the squirming tedium of sitting in the back seat on an endless family car trip, your cheek taking on the texture of the vinyl seat as some grown-up lectures you on the beauty of the passing scenery.

J. Hoberman:

“Production design” is a poor term to describe Owen Paterson’s avidly garish look. Gaudier than a Hindu-temple roof, louder than the Las Vegas night, Speed Racer is a cathedral of glitz. The movie projects a Candy Land topography of lava-lamp skies and Hello Kitty clouds—part Middle Earth, part mental breakdown—using a beyond-Bollywood color scheme wherein telephones are blood orange, jet planes electric fuchsia, and ultra-turquoise is the new black.

Call it Power Kitsch, Neo-Jetsonism, or Icon-D—this film could launch a movement.

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon:

Every once in a while I’m hit with a movie whose existence I find impossible to comprehend. Who is this movie for? Did anyone involved take the time to have an actual thought — even just one — before investing time, care and money into this thing? Andy and Larry Wachowski’s “Speed Racer” is so bereft of intelligence, style and excitement that I can’t figure out who in the world it’s supposed to appeal to: baby boomers nostalgic for the old Japanamation cartoon on which it’s based? Parents who want to cultivate ADD in their kids? The picture is bankrupt in terms of everything but color, and even then, its palette suggests not careful selection but no selection: There isn’t a single neon-jellybean or retro-flower-power color that isn’t represented in “Speed Racer” — if a color is bright, it’s in there. That’s not visual boldness; it’s cowardice — and that’s only the beginning of the picture’s problems.

Anthony Lane in the New Yorker:

A four-year-old will be reduced to a gibbering but highly gratified wreck; an eight-year-old will wander around wearing a look that was last seen on the face of Dante after he met Beatrice. But what about the rest of us? True, our eyeballs will slowly, though never completely, recover, but what of our souls? I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of “Speed Racer” to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning “of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.”

It seemed a little odd that, in an age where child predators, to hear a lot of the media tell the story, lurk behind every corner, skulk near every school yard, and run like the wildebeest on the internets, so little attention was taken of a guy who, let’s face it, has pretty much been busted a half-dozen times or more molesting girls in their early teens.

Why this is so is a weird question. A big part is the institutionalized tyranny of the comely blonde co-ed in peril: Poor black girls, forgive the expression, get pissed on, figuratively and, in this case, literally.

Another part of it is that the rock press still has pretty lame standards, and the arts sections of even fairly respected dailies don’t have the sort of rigorous oversight that would include, say, reminding people that the guy their kids are going to see that night can be seen on the internet urinating into the mouth of a young girl … that police found pictures of him having sex with another girl on a digital camera at one of his homes … and that often at rock concerts stars have flunkies who go out in the crowd and invite women (or in this case, girls) to their boss’s liking back for the after-show party…. so on and so forth. .

The New York Times, for example, has not distinguished itself in its coverage of R. Kelly. Yesterday, the paper ran a dutiful short item on the fact that he goes on trial today on various counts of child pornography. The piece doesn’t mention what is said to be the most memorable part of the videotape at the center of the case: Indeed, if the Times has ever used a variant of the word “urinate” in writing about this story, Factiva can’t find it.

It’s distasteful, of course; it’s not like the news hasn’t seeped into popular culture, as Dave Chappelle’s devastating parody music video attests; and Kelly deserves the presumption of innocence. But when video evidence exists, when family members have identified both parties; and when a reasonable person might suppose (particularly when associates of Kelly’s have been quoted using the word’s “compulsion” and “sickness”) that the problem is ongoing (what do people think goes on after an R. Kelly concert?)… it might be worth simply sharing information with readers.

The Times as a rule hasn’t done that. It has found a lot of room to talk about Kelly in other contexts. Kelefa Sanneh, the paper’s recently departed pop critic, made it his specialty to downplay Kelly’s legal problems, making the argument that … he was talented and popular and had triumphed over the scandal:

Mr. Kelly, the legendarily freaky R&B star, long ago established himself as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation. The sex scandal that threatened to derail his career in 2002 ended up doing the opposite: it made him more productive, more successful and, somehow—maybe because more people began paying attention to his excellent music—more respected than ever before.

Note that the particulars of the scandal wasn’t detailed—and that the implication left is that it was behind him.

Now, there is a backhanded way to intellectually justify such writing: That legal issues or indeed any personal behavior are irrelevant in assessing someone’s talent. That’s a position most people would be comfortable with in the post-Ezra Pound era.

But Sanneh’s argument—let’s call it the Freaky Defense—seems to go further; he seems to believe that when writing about pop stars, such issues are not only irrelevant, they don’t even deserve to be included in the discussion, that they don’t, in a journalistic context, exist—if, as I understand the argument, the star is appropriately “freaky.” As a matter of critical aesthetics, isn’t there something decadent about that? *

Last May, Sanneh, restating his thesis, wrote, “Five years ago a sex scandal threatened to dethrone him, but in the end it merely gave him more of what every star needs: attention and motivation.”

In both passages you can see the implication that Kelly’s problems were behind him; in neither case (or, indeed, ever) did Sanneh take the time to lay out the details of the charges, or the myriad other accusations leveled against Kelly, from other girls he engineered legal settlements with to other pieces of homemade child pornography found in Kelly’s homes.

And beyond passages like that, Sanneh’s admiration for Kelly cropped up everywhere: In a review of a Jamie Foxx show, Sanneh couldn’t help digressing into more praise for Kelly. Kelly, he told us, “excels at turning ridiculous boasts and promises (”You remind me of my jeep/I wanna ride it”) into glorious R&B songs. Of course, Mr. Kelly has two things that Mr. Foxx lacks: a gorgeous voice and a first-rate catalog of hits.”

Here again, what Sanneh chose to focus on was cheerful and admiring. Kelly also has (and Foxx presumably lacks) a collection of child pornography he’s taken himself, but Sanneh didn’t mention that.

Here’s Sanneh writing about some Kelly guest appearances on some new pop songs:

Hit-hungry singers and rappers beware: An R. Kelly guest appearance is a mixed blessing. Sure, he’s one of the all-time great R&B singer-songwriters, but the one thing he can’t do is play a small role. In ”I’m a Flirt” (Sony Urban), from the new Bow Wow album, Mr. Kelly issues a warning: ”Homie, don’t bring your girl to meet me.” As if to show why, he rides roughshod over his host; Bow Wow barely manages to squeak out a verse before Mr. Kelly takes over. And although Fat Joe assembled an impressive gang of guests for an exuberant remix of ”Make It Rain” (Terror Squad), Mr. Kelly’s verse outshines all the others (”I’m tryna keep it R&B/But these streets is a part of me,” he sings, ascending into falsetto); he gives the chorus a tuneful makeover too. If you want to survive an encounter with Mr. Kelly, maybe it’s best not to holler or shout but to whisper instead. That’s what Ciara does in ”Promise” (LaFace/Sony BMG), a slow and spacey R&B hit that recently got the R. Kelly treatment. She is often compared to Mr. Kelly’s onetime protege Aaliyah, who died in 2001, and indeed ”Promise (Remix)” sounds a bit like a reunion. As these two exchange words and verses, the breathy rising star does something truly surprising: She holds her own.

Again no mention is made of Kelly’s problems, and the Aaliyah reference is arresting; she was not just Kelly’s protege. She was a girl in her young teens press reports say Kelly carried on an affair with and finally married—at age fifteen. Her parents finally caught up with him and had the marriage annulled; Kelly tried to deny it but the marriage certificate was eventually found.

The NYT’s relentless cheerleading for Kelly hasn’t been limited to Sanneh.

When Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet” video cycle was all the rage, the paper published a big chart mapping out all the “complex interpersonal relationships” of the series. The online version, which doesn’t include the chart, doesn’t mention the accusations against him.

The paper also published a lengthy appreciation of the series, mentioning the legal case only in a parenthetical aside, pairing the information, incredibly, with the reassuring news that he has won awards: “Mr. Kelly, a Grammy-winning singer who is scheduled to go on trial on child pornography charges in Chicago on Sept. 17, declined an interview request.”

And recently, Devendra Barnhart, serving recently as a celebrity song touter, talked about Kelly this way: “His album makes me feel like I’m driving a turquoise Hummer over a rainbow made of distilled euphoria.”

The paper had never told readers what Kelly’s sex tape made people feel like. Here’s what Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis, who wrote the original exposés on Kelly, said how the tape made him feel:

“[T]his is not Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson. It’s not fun and games. This girl has the disembodied look of a rape victim and he’s urinating in her mouth. It’s a sickening spectacle.”

* The issue reminds me, tangentially, of a dance critic I once had. She had done a review of a local dance performance, but as we got more and more entangled in the editing process it became apparent some issue was motivating her I couldn’t get a handle on. Some hours later, it came out: It was by a troupe that featured disabled people—dancers with crutches, braces and wheelchairs—and she was trying to review the show without mentioning it.

————–

Previously in Hitsville:

Tribune, Sun-Times protest closed hearings in R. Kelly case

Secret hearings in the R. Kelly case

The Godfather Who Shagged Me: The complete R. Kelly SexFacts™—Everything you ever wanted to know about the R. Kelly case

R. Kelly’s Publicist: He slept with my daughter!

The story thus far is that NBC, which had a very popular slate of shows available at the iTunes Store, wanted to raise prices. Apple said no.

NBC, a media conglomerate that kicks it old style when it comes to feeling like it should be able to squeeze as much money as possible out of its customers, whined for a while and then finally picked up its Offices and Heroeses and went homeses.

Now it’s playing with the bully down the block. (Microsoft, if you follow my point.) Here’s where it gets interesting. In the old world, that would be the end of the story.

Twenty years ago, if an indie retailer had protested a jump in, say, CD prices, the big corporation would have pulled its product and gone over to Sam Goody’s or whatever, and the small retailer would be screwed.

That’s the media landscape Big Content knew and loved. The sitch today is different. Microsoft’s competition for the iPod is the Zune, which despite the company’s best efforts has a puny market share.

So—getting NBC, with its very hep and sophisticated lineup of shows, is a coup right? What does Microsoft care if the company wants to try to jack up the price on this or that?

Because apparently that wasn’t the whole deal. According to a story on the NYT’s Bits blog, Microsoft made a couple of arrangements with NBC:

Microsoft […] will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

[…]

[…T]he copyright filtering system is still in development and its exact form has not been set.

Mr. Perrette said the plan is to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.”

That’s corporatespeak for “Your Zune won’t be able to play pirated material. ” They are talking about a system that has become a Holy Grail for Big Content: Filters that would allow only legitimate—i.e., corporate approved—media to work on the players.

This is a sort of reverse DRM. A song with digital rights management attached will only play on certain players. This is a system where the player excludes everything but approved content.

It’s a fiendish plan, if it weren’t for the fact that no one in their right mind would buy a product like that.

(I’m a little surprised the companies only went half way. What they really need is a Zune that, when you try to play pirated material, automatically sends your personal information, complete with GPS coordinates, to the RIAA for automated legal action.)

After the item was posted, Microsoft began to spin the issue wildly. The writer never said the copyright cop had been incorporated into the Zune, just that that had been part of the deal with NBC, and quoted Microsoft thusly:

Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to discuss details of this effort other than to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC. He said Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns.

But after the piece was posted, the company complained, and the writer posted this update:

In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, refers to this post, and the blog discussion it prompted. He writes:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

It’s worth noting that [NBC’s] Mr. Perrette told me that Microsoft committed to explore filtering; he didn’t say it committed to implementing those filters.

Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: “I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.” Later he added, “We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”

In other words, the original story was entirely correct.

It must be said that one explanation for all of this is that the unsophisticated folks from NBC came to the table with this proposal and Microsoft led them on (”Of course we can do that! Why, we’ve got a big ol’ team of people up in Redmond that are just wizards at this sort of thing!”), with no intention of actually doing it.

But it’s still a good example of how the transformative power of the digital convergence has made the old world of doing business more difficult; if nothing else, word of such comical dealings gets out. The irony is that NBC shows are going to be watched on computers and the internet no matter what the company does.

Moving from the iTunes Store to the Zune just means it will make less money. Sooner or later, presumably, one of the Six Sigma GE folks overseeing NBC Universal are going to notice the declining digital income figures and knock some heads together.

Microsoft, however, needs a lot more exclusives than The Office to compete with Apple, and the next company to come along dangling a deal won’t be as dumb as NBC.

According to the court, TorrentSpy operators had intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators. The company had previously been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.

The fine was based on a $30,000 fine for each of more than 3500 movies or TV shows torrented.

The company’s response:

TorrentSpy’s attorney, Ira Rothken, called that ruling “draconian in nature and unfair.” He said he did not believe any data was intentionally destroyed, and that some actions were taken to protect the privacy of TorrentSpy users.

Rothken also said at the time that TorrentSpy would appeal any decision on damages.

Such rulings are pointless; there are a dozen other torrent search sites coordinating the transfer of untold gigabytes of music and movies every hour, most of them based outside the U.S. The case is another petulant move by Big Content, in this case the MPAA, to take as many small fry down down with it as possible.

From yesterday’s AP precede story on R. Kelly’s child-porn trial, set to begin Friday:

The 41-year-old Kelly, whose first name is Robert, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. But Kelly — one of urban music’s biggest stars, and a consistent hitmaker despite his legal woes — is glad the wait is over, his spokesman said.

“Every waking moment, he’s always had this hanging over his head,” spokesman Allan Mayer said. “He’s confident that when all the evidence comes out he’ll be shown not to be guilty of any crime.”

Kelly, of course, has done everything to delay the trial he could over the last six years. And, indeed, even as the AP story was hitting the wires, his lawyer was trying to gum up the works again. The AP sent out this story a few hours ago:

CHICAGO - Defense attorneys for R. Kelly have asked a judge to postpone the R&B singer’s trial on child pornography charges.

That motion is being kept secret, so it’s unclear why the request was made. But it comes as publicity surrounding the case heats up and some media speculate about who might testify.

A few weeks back the judge, Vincent Gaughn, noted that he had held some 113 sessions in the case to that point.

Variety likes it

True to its origins as a ‘60s Japanese animated kiddie favorite, “Speed Racer” blasts into cultural prominence four decades later as an ultra-cartoony actioner defined by its Day-Glo colors, resistance to any laws of physics, and notions of good and evil that go no further than having the hero drive a white car. Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers’ return behind the camera for the first time since “The Matrix” trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. Otherwise, it’s pure cotton candy — entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist. General audiences worldwide look to make this Warner Bros. release a substantial hit in all formats, from Imax to eventual homeview sales, with extra coin assured from moppets who require repeat viewings.

The film is indeed a technical marvel, and I think Variety actually doesn’t quite give it enough credit: The car-racing sequences are dizzying, elating, constantly evolving and surprising; that aspect humanizes and transforms the animation and, combined with the psychedelia that infuses virtually every scene, makes for a nearly mind-altering movie experience.

Perhaps it’s the (fried) synapses talking, but I found the climatic race of this very long movie pleasurable in an almost Ben-Hur-ian way.

The big question was how subversive the film would be; the directors, the Wachowski brothers, are known for the Matrix series, but before that did a brutal and sex-driven modern noir, Bound. The Matrix is passé now, of course, but from the films’ interesting racial casting on down the brothers demonstrated both a disruptive vision and a commitment to risk-taking. And then there’s Larry/Laurenca Wachowski’s transvestitism ….

And so for Speed Racer, they … concocted a subtext-less family film. Staged as a hilarious, deadpan homage to the clunky blocking of the original Japanese animated series from the 1960s, the live-action parts of the film amble along, hitting the marks of the very familiar tale of the talented young star who can go all the way if just given the chance. (The film’s story is so retro that it doesn’t even nod to a Rocky-style “going the distance is all that matters” theme, and our hero, the titular Speed Racer, barely registers as rebellious and hotheaded.) The point of the film is the digital animation, which as it amazes throws down a gauntlet as well.

Indeed, the entire film serves as a withering riposte to Pixar’s Cars, and it is perhaps on the filmic level that the subversiveness emerges. After seeing Speed Racer it’s hard to take John Lassiter’s little auto toon seriously. I don’t have a copy of Ben-Hur around but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the bravura finale here was deliberately based on its rhythms and beats. And damned if at one point, as Speed prepares to meet his destiny and revs his engine, the sound doesn’t drop out—in an eerie homage to James Taylor’s silent, existential sprint into celluloid heat at the end of Two-Lane Blacktop.

“You Were Right” is one of those songs: half jokey, half-not-jokey; absurdist, serious; nonsensical, profound; about nothing … about everything. It could only have come out of the 1990s.

If you haven’t heard it, it begins with a crashing, soaring, repeated chorus: “You were wrong/When you said /Everything’s going to be all right.”

The vocals cry out with pain; the song, it seems, will be a tragedy and an elegy.

Except, then the verses come, quieter, confiding, intimate:

You were right when you said
All that glitters isn’t gold
You were right when you said
All we are is dust in the wind
You were right when you said
We are all just bricks in the wall.

Oh, you say, I get it. And that’s about it, though as the song goes on the group get funnier, quoting Dylan, Seger, the Stones, and, in a burst of imagination, Hendrix. (“You were right when you said/Manic depression’s a frustrating mess.”)

The question about the song is just who or what is being made fun of. At face value, the song is probably trying to say that homilies (”Everything’s gonna be all right”) don’t help us, but that on some level even the hoariest stadium rock cliché contains truth. Which I think I agree with.

On the the hand, the guys in Built to Spill are probably being arch. They know John Cougar Mellencamp has nothing to say, and that Hendrix, often, didn’t either. And in the end, after all, a hard rain hasn’t yet fallen. You can’t help noticing most of the lines are from dorky classic rock acts, the last line of the verses is a total kiss-off: “You were right when you said/That this is the end.”

… which in turn is a joke, because it’s not the end, really; the song concludes with the repeated mocking refrain, “Do you ever think about that?”, which seems to be another  swipe at credulous music fans.

On the other hand, it is true that all that glitters isn’t gold, and it could be the band is trying to make it clear that wisdom comes from unexpected places. On the other hand, the “all that glitters isn’t gold” line is probably just an acid “Stairway to Heaven” reference. On the other hand, the woman in the song is sure that all that glitters is gold.

On the other hand, you can’t buy a stairway to heaven, either.

————

Last week’s “Song About Rock.”

The complete “Songs About Rock.”

Microsoft ventured into downloadable video sales for Zunes last October when it released its second-generation players and software, but the content was limited to music videos.

Starting Tuesday, Microsoft will sell episodes of TV shows including Comedy Central’s “South Park” and Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica” for $1.99 each.

In a small victory over Apple, Microsoft said the Zune Marketplace will also carry NBC shows including “The Office” and “Heroes.” NBC Universal has said it pulled its shows from iTunes over Apple’s unwillingness to set different prices for TV shows.

The announcement is significant because Apple and NBC had a spat over pricing last year, resulting in NBC’s pulling its shows from the iTunes Store. It was a dumb move, because NBC shows tend to be a cut or two above normal network fare, and dovetail nicely with the Apple demographic.

In previous posts, we’ve seen how words like “flexibility” has been used in the coverage of this spat. Apple has a flat pricing plan—$1.99 for TV shows—and NBC wanted “flexibility,” we were told. What it really wanted was to “charge more money.” The AP:

Microsoft spokesman Jason Reindorp said flexible pricing is within the scope of its agreement with NBC, but that there are no concrete plans.

Why doesn’t the story say the truth, which is “Microsoft will let NBC charge more than Apple for its shows on the Zune?”

————–

Previously:

The NBC vs. Apple war continues
“Flexibility” raises its ugly head again
When prices get “attractive”
Apple vs. NBC: The pissing match continues