Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York chronicles the inner and outer struggles of a successful theater director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) trying to deal with the women in his life while attempting to create a life-size replica of New York City inside the warehouse where he’s staging his new play.  See trailer.

Chocolate-Magnate Wonka Arrested for Murder! 

World-renowned candy-bar maker and multi-trillionaire William J. Wonka was arrested yesterday evening after four young children perished while touring Wonka’s top-secret chocolate factory.

So far there are confirmed reports of five fatalities:  Augustus Gloup, Violet Beauregarde, Mike Teavee, and Veruca Salt. One adult, Mr. Salt, is also presumed dead. A fifth winner, Charles Bucket, is said to be alive and unharmed along with his grandfather.

Paul Newman couldn't have existed today — at least, not the way we came to know him.

Sure, the talent would have been there, the classic good looks, the magnetism, the easy charm. But the privacy he demanded (and won), which helped establish and solidify his mystique as a bona fide movie star, never would have been afforded him in our tabloid-driven, celebrity-obsessed culture.

Sad but true. Part of why we were fascinated with Newman, who died Friday at 83 of cancer, was because we didn't know every gory detail of his life, even though he'd reached the zenith of fame and popularity. He left us craving more — and that he lived and died far from Hollywood's glare in the small town of Westport, Conn., in the converted farmhouse he shared with his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, speaks volumes not only about who he was but who he didn't want to be.

It's hard to think of an actor today who compares in that regard: someone who's blazingly confident on-screen but maintains some mystery about who he really is off of it, someone who would make even hardened, cynical journalists go weak in the knees upon meeting face-to-face. Newman's longtime friend and co-star, Robert Redford, certainly qualifies. But of the current generation of stars? We know too much about Tom Cruise. Will Smith? Leonardo DiCaprio? Johnny Depp, maybe — though he's carved out a path of quirky character roles, despite his leading-man looks.

George Clooney springs to mind, but even he has fought public battles with the paparazzi over the need to respect celebrities' privacy. Clooney himself seemed to recognize the legacy Newman left in reacting to his death Saturday morning: "He set the bar too high for the rest of us ... not just actors, but all of us. He will be greatly missed," he said — through his publicist.

Cultural critic Mark Dery, whose provocative work we've featured on BoingBoing, took a break from ruminating on bottom-feeder weirdness to write an equally insightful piece for Print magazine about copyright law and the Orphan Works Act. Mark wrote me, "Nothing says 'pulse-pounding, bubbles-in-your-blood, white-knuckled excitement' like copyright law." Seriously though, as Cory has posted before, the Orphan Works legislation is very, very important. From Dery's Print article, titled "Does the Orphan Works Bill Mean Copyright Chaos?":

"Swimming beneath the surface of the copyright debate is the shadow of something more profound: our cultural shift from an understanding of creativity as something indelibly individual—a notion that held sway from the Romantic 19th century through the Modernist 20th—to the post-modern sense of a more collective creativity, one that expresses itself through his-torical allusion, cultural quotation, and aesthetic appropriation. When Holland says that “creators who use orphan works are usually remix artists, who can’t create without appropriating the work of others,” he’s implying that works inspired by other works are somehow more exalted than works composed of other works."

By contrast, advocates of radically deregulated copyright such as Lawrence Lessig, the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, argue for what they call “remix culture.” In a 2001 article in Wired magazine, Lessig wrote, “Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn’t reuse.” Of course, Holland points out, there’s a difference between inspiration and appropriation.

Last year around this time, we asked the question: What Constitutes an Online Hit? We talked to a number of industry professionals, many of which cited the magic play number of 100,000. But some 12 months later, more people are watching — and making — online video than ever before, so we wanted to see if that number had changed.

For our original story, we spoke with Funny or Die, Revver, JibJab and Heavy. At the time, Funny or Die said that if a celebrity-driven video did 100,000 plays in the first week, that was good (great if it was a UGC vid). Revver said 100,000 views in a day (which would translate to 400,000 to 500,000 over the vid’s lifetime). Overachievers JibJab said 1.5 million plays in the first week was a hit for them. And while Heavy pegged a hit at 100,000 plays, it said it would settle for 50,000 if those were 50,000 rabid, evangelizing fans.

And now?