Gather round the campfire, kids, and listen to another Fast Charlie horror story, with the primary villain being (who else?) Vertical Distribution.

It appears that Fast Charlie, which opened theatrically a month ago (12.8.23) and began on-demand streaming at the same time, is being pirated to death, at a considerable scale.

The piracy is happening, it appears, because Vertical apparently failed to aggressively enable the practice of torrent poisoning, which suppresses and/or blocks the sharing of torrent files by pirates.

As of three nights ago over 3000 “feeder” sites were offering pirated copies of Fast Charlie. The entire film, I’m told, can be downloaded within five to six minutes.

Serious distributors protect their films with appropriate measures. Not long ago Poor Things was being offered at dozens of torrent sites, I’m told, but torrent poisoning corrected this situation and now it’s all but nonexistent in the pirate realm.

It appears that Vertical has demonstrated an indifference to standard streaming distribution protocols, at least as far as guarding against piracy is concerned.

I’m told that Vertical sent unencrypted cinema DCPs to U.S. theatres, thereby allowing pirates to get a head start on illegal copies.

A MUSO report states that Fast Charlie is currently being illegally viewed around 28 thousand times daily, and 1.67 million pirate downloads have happened over the last 39 days.

Distributors start the ball rolling by sending files to legit streamers prior to a given release date.

Distributors also have to aggressively enable the practice of torrent poisoning, which suppresses and/or blocks the sharing of torrent files by pirates.

I know that pirating is a two-step, feed-and-eat process. “Seeders” are thieves who have the complete file and are sharing it with others. The health and speed of a torrent largely depends on the number of “seeders“, as more seeders typically mean faster and more reliable downloads.

The feeders or “leechers” are Average Joes downloading the file. Once a leecher has the complete file and begins to share with others, they transition into seeders.

For what it’s worth, HE has only streamed pirated films twice — Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in Manhattan and Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy.

I respected Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, but I’ve never understood or acknowledged what some have described as a fascinating uncertainty.

Simply put, the writing and acting are such that I never even flirted with the possibility that Sandra Huller’s successful writer had pushed her less successful writer husband off a third-floor balcony to his death. It’s obvious that director and co-writer Triet strongly empathizes with Huller’s character so where’s the ambiguity?

During her Golden Globes acceptance speech after winning the best screenplay prize, Triet spilled the Anatomy plot beans. I didn’t raise my eyebrows when I heard her say “suicide” — I slumped into my seat and muttered “yeah…so?”

N.Y. Times’ Elena Bergeron, “Best and Worst Moments From The Golden Globes”:

Posted four days ago by former Disney and 20th Century Fox hotshot Bill Mechanic…a Deadline “guest column (1.4.24, 9:11 am):

David “know it all” Poland has written the following about last night’s Golden Globes telecast:

Dead wrong: A modest-sized army of Academy lightweights, surface-skimmers and none-too-brights (i.e., mostly SAG/AFTRA members) was awakened and perhaps even jolted by the Emma Stone and Poor Things wins. Morning-after reassessments are happening all over town.

“I think this is a romcom….Bella falls in love with life itself!” Emma Stone wins Best Actress, Musical or Comedy for Poor Things. Excellent!

Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy winning Best Actor, Motion Picture, Drama…total Oppenheimer sweep, not just tonight but at the Oscars in a few weeks.

Why is it that I’m having extremely, intensely negative reactions to all the people in the ads? Which are all about travel, medications, B’way musicals, Stop & Shop, Aura, Secret, etc.

The guy playing Bob Marley in the biopic is much better looking than the real Bob Marley.

Oppenheimer’s Ludwig Goransson wins for Best Score…total Oppie sweep.

Billie Eilish looks like a freak…her outfit seems to be about a form of hostility. Or indifference.

Did Barbie just win a Golden Globe for making loads of money?

…so I bailed and haven’t returned. I’ve been told Season #2 is much better and I should give it another go. Congrats to Jeremy Allen White, for what it’s worth.

I was respectful of Anatomy of a Fall but never a huge fan. Too long, no real tension in the matter of Sandra Huller‘s possible guilt, hated the little kid Congrats all the same to Justine Triet.

Note to The Bear‘s Ayo Edebari and everyone else on the planet: “Never say ‘oh my God!'”

Anyone wearing a burgundy or maroon tux gets an instant HE demerit.

All hail the Golden Globe wins by The Holdovers Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey, Jr. The halting of the Charles Melton blitzkreig is noted and appreciated.

Or at least when it was still hanging in there on its own follicular terms. The 31 year-old Sean Connery may have applied some kind of augmentation for Dr. No (a scalp darkener?) but what the camera saw was more or less what was there. (The first 007 “rug” appeared in Goldfinger over two years later.).

On top of which Dr. No (which was only a modest earner upon opening in late ‘62) and From Russia With Love (ditto) are still the best of the series — lean and rigorous and relatively modest in terms of scale and pushing the bounds of credibility. Plus there were no sensitivity police around to protect the Zoomer candy–asses from all that bruising sexism and rugged machismo, Mainly because (thank you, 20th Century!) Zoomers wouldn’t become a cultural force until roughly 2010.