DOWNLOAD HOTEL CHEVALIER AND SEE NATHALIE PORTMAN NUDE...IF YOU LIVE IN THE U.S.A.

The naiveté is astounding. 20th Century Fox has released the short film, Hotel Chevalier, free on iTunes in an effort to promote Wes Anderson's upcoming feature film, The Darjeeling Limited; however, the short film is only available via the American iTunes, and therefore unavailable to the rest of the world. iTunes is already irritating enough with its proprietary DRM protection, which prevents iTunes files from playing on non-Apple devices. But the arrogance in releasing anything to a U.S. only audience on the internet flies in the face of everything the internet is about: instant access everywhere by everyone. It's old-world thinking in a new world order, and it's going to fail if 20th Century Fox actually believes it can limit and control this sort of marketing to certain territories.

I call Hotel Chevalier an "insubstantial short film" in the graphic, but in fact I thought it was intriguing. About as intriguing as a good trailer for a movie, except without the rapid editing and swoosh, boom, pow sound effects. It sets up a distinctly curious relationship, but offers no pay off. But more interesting to me than the film itself is the fact that the studio would seek to limit to a single market the online release of a free short film that is really no more than a trailer for a movie. It's as baffling as it is frustrating, as the studio seems completely oblivious to the new reality of online content. Within hours, people were uploading the file to bittorrent sites and within 24-hours had uploaded cracked (non-DRM) files to YouTube, MetaCafe, GoogleVideo and others. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox has a staff busily yanking the files off the web as quickly as individuals could post them.

As a Canadian, I bristled at the idea that I could not see this short film immediately, unrestricted, along with my brothers and sisters south of the border. I don't care what the rationale might be. It's just plain silly. And futile. I became so obsessed with watching the video despite being told "no" by iTunes and 20th Century Fox, that I just kept clicking on GoogleVideo until I successfully got a version that hadn't yet been yanked by the thought-police. Oh, the quality was awful. A pale shadow of the proper iTunes version, I'm sure. But that's how badly I was determined to see it. And Wes should be unhappy I didn't get to see a better quality version in order to make a better first impression.

Keep in mind this is a TRAILER FOR A MOVIE. BEING OFFERED FOR FREE to anyone with iTunes in the U.S. The technology to rip and distribute the short film is ubiquitous. Why on earth are they not just letting things take their natural course? I can only imagine, they want to control the marketing of the short film with a more timely release of the feature film in foreign countries (although major cities in Canada get release prints of major movies at the same time as New York and L.A. and BEFORE most smaller American cities do).

It's the arrogance and ignorance that irked me most and drove me to find a way to watch the damn film no matter what. Maybe that is part of the marketing? To be able to tell the world that despite their best efforts, the world insisted on pirating, ripping, trading, and bittorrenting the file. In which case, I fell for the charade hook line and sinker.

Instead, however, I'm inclined to think they're just morons who haven't caught up to the modern world in September 2007. Because surely it will be another world in October altogether.