Good morning 🐣

And Happy New Year!

Every January 1 in the U.S. brings with it a fresh batch of art released into the public domain. This means the copyright has expired and the work is free to use for the greater culture. (Think Shakespeare and how you can do anything you want with his plays.)

One of last year’s biggies was the original incarnation of Winnie-the-Pooh and you can already see people capitalizing on that, such as with the forthcoming indie horror film “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” (Just be sure to avoid putting him in a red shirt; Disney is the company that added some clothing to the formerly nudist bear and they still own that right.)

This year also brings some interesting contributions, as explained by Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, compositions by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and a novelty song about ice cream.

Some other films entering the public domain this year:

• “The Jazz Singer,” the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue;

• “Wings,” winner of the first Academy Award for outstanding picture; and

• “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” a silent classic by director F. W. Murnau that is one of my absolute favorites.

But the granddaddy of copyright expirations is exploding your capitalist minds one year from now: Mickey Mouse. The New York Times headline says it best: “Early Disney Creation Will Soon Be Public Property.”

To be fair, Disney will still own the vast majority of what we think of as Mickey — any designs, character traits, and stories about him made after 1928 — but the original version of Mickey Mouse (no voice and a rat-like nose) and the short film he appears in, “Steamboat Willie,” will officially belong to the people on January 1, 2024.

Things are about to get weird.

Announcement 📢

I’ll be out in the woods next week, so please be sure to check your inbox Monday morning rather than the usual Wednesday. Thanks!

A brief intermission 🍿

Now watch this 👀

I’ve known of approximately three Sheilas throughout my life:

1. my aunt, who was always the life of the party (when I was a kid, she and I would be sticking spoons on our noses in the middle of fancy restaurants);

2. Bruce Campbell’s love interest in “Army of Darkness” (played by Embeth Davidtz — “gimme some sugar, baby”); and

3. 1973’s “The Last of Sheila,” a murder mystery whodunnit set on board a yacht sailing around the Mediterranean.

That’s roughly the extent of my experience and knowledge on the topic of Sheila. The last of Sheila is also pretty minimal. She’s a character that we get only a brief glimpse of before she meets her untimely demise, but her memory haunts the rest of the picture.

Rian Johnson (the guy who murdered “Star Wars” and pissed on its grave, according to the idiots on the alt-right) cited it as a big inspiration for the new sequel to his masterpiece “Knives Out,” the equally great, entertaining, and highly prescient “Glass Onion.” And you can really see it in the initial setup. In “The Last of Sheila,” movie producer Clinton Greene (played by James Coburn) invites some of his close showbiz friends to vacation with him onboard his yacht exactly one year after the hit-and-run death of his wife, Sheila. He has an elaborate game planned out for them and most of the movie involves them chasing clues from port to port while their dirty little secrets slowly come out in the open. Of course one of them is eventually suspected of being Sheila’s murderer.

The film has a fun origin: actor Anthony Perkins (“Psycho”) and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who actually makes a brief cameo in “Glass Onion” playing a video game against Daniel Craig’s character, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Angela Lansbury, and Natasha Lyonne) loved hosting elaborate scavenger hunts for their friends. They were eventually inspired to adapt this hobby into a screenplay together and convinced Herbert Ross to direct.

I kind of love this little detail: The characters all line up to take a picture…

…and then you can see them all reflected in Clinton’s sunglasses…

I don’t know; I’m easy.

But anyways it’s a clever, breezy, little mystery thriller with a great cast and a sense of fun and I was kind of disappointed I didn’t get to spend more time in its world. Do check it out.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check your email on Monday.

Until next time! 👋