Youku in June announced a distribution agreement with Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. Under the terms of that deal, Youku would add 400 to 500 Warner Bros. titles to its on-demand paid video service, including the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” series.

Movie studios have long had difficulty establishing a legitimate home-entertainment market in China. The country limits the number of foreign films that can be distributed there each year. Bootleggers produce and disseminate large quantities of pirated material at inexpensive prices.

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Here’s a kid’s film that BoomTown–who is force-marched to see these until approximately 2018–is actually looking forward to: The sequel to the delightful animated movie “Kung Fu Panda.”

This one, as everything in Hollywood must be these days, is in 3-D and subtitled “The Kaboom of Doom.”

Enjoy:

Go Giants!

As in: The World Series Champions San Francisco Giants!

After BoomTown and the Swisher boys finished toilet-papering the intersection of Castro and 18th Streets (and my No. 1 son Louie sure has some arm on him), it was back to All Things Digital Global HQ to gloat all night about the baseball triumph.

And also wallow in victory over those fans in Texas who did not think our lovely City by the Bay and its vegan-leaning, organic-loving, get-your-freak-on-living denizens could pull it off.

Yes, we are too politically correct, but it must be said, in any case: Fear the Beard! (Also, Beware the Hair!)

And Giants fans also know how to do great music video, such as this one by Ashkon, created a few weeks ago:

Actually, the movie about a misfit who conquers despite the odds would make a nice metaphor for Yahoo these days, especially if the company could be motivated to butt-kicking activity simply by a desire for tasty dumplings.

As I previously posted, Weiner’s departure from Yahoo (YHOO) was made official today in an announcement by Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, where he will become an executive in residence.

I would decode this latest letter, sent to me by several Yahoos, as usual, but it is kind of vintage Yahoo–with an all’s-well-that-ends-badly tone of most of the company’s missives of late.

So let’s just let it speak for itself:

As some of you may know, Jeff Weiner and his wife Lisette celebrated the birth of their new baby girl, Sophia, four weeks ago, and Jeff has been on a scheduled paternity leave. Over the course of his time away, Jeff and I spoke a few times as he reflected on his priorities. After careful consideration, he has decided to leave Yahoo to spend more time at home with his new family before beginning a new chapter in his career. On an interim basis, Jeff’s team will report to me as we consider how to best move the organization forward.

Sue

Also, here’s that much more entertaining chopsticks-dumpling fight scene from “Kung Fu Panda”:

But no! And, unless Microsoft (MSFT) mercifully steps in and forks over $34 a share to rebid for all of Yahoo, it’s likely this playground-level of fighting will go on until Aug. 1.

Why? Because that’s when Yahoo will hold its annual meeting, which is where Icahn’s proxy fight against the company will presumably come to a head.

Thus, it’ll be a long, hot, tit-for-tat summer and I expect my 3-year-old son–who can break out into “Kung Fu Panda” hiii-yah dementia at any moment–will be behaving better than this pair in the three months ahead.

I can’t believe that BoomTown is saying this–given that we hoped and prayed for the day when Yahoo would finally emerge from its year-long cone of silence and start talking.

As it turns out, those were the days, my friend.

Because the back-and-forth between Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Icahn has all the annoyance of two cats howling at each other in the alley in the middle of the night and none of the suspense.

Let’s be clear: This is mostly Icahn’s poison-pen war, trying to whip up a big dish of shareholder ire, in order to increase his threat and, of course, the possibility of a big payday for himself.

Does BoomTown imagine Icahn cares one little bit about the employees of Yahoo or the best course of action for the company?

Not even one teeny-weeny little bit. And yet, he must drone on.

Like yesterday, when Icahn fired off another of his increasingly fanciful missives on the same basic theme: Yahoo is run by idiots.

Previously, he had focused on Yahoo’s botching of the Microsoft takeover fight, the evils of the generous severance plan Yahoo put in place and then on his intention to oust Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.

Now, Icahn is moving onto a golden oldie with an accusation that Yahoo let Google (GOOG) clean its clock over the last few years.

What? You’re kidding! Actually, even the not-so-swift Jo from “The Facts of Life” would have caught onto that fact of tech life long, long ago.

Nonetheless, Icahn blusters: “I ask again what your great ‘plan’ has been over the last few years. … Why did you permit Google to leave you in the dust?”

Previously, he had meandered into spy-versus-spy territory with this gem: “Until now, I naively believed that self-destructive doomsday machines were fictional devices found only in James Bond movies. I never believed that anyone would actually create and activate one in real life. I guess I never knew about Yang and the Yahoo Board.”

Cue the 10-second countdown of the nuclear missile aimed at New York, as Yang strokes his white Persian cat malevolently!

Which is why it is perplexing that Yahoo chooses to so quickly engage with Icahn by answering such dopiness.

But Bostock did with the seriousness of a righteous preacher, when he stated primly last week: “Conspicuously absent from your letter is any credible plan for Yahoo other than a repetition of your insistence that the company should sell itself to Microsoft. Indeed, your stated view that ‘the only way to salvage Yahoo in the long if not short run is to merge with Microsoft’ demonstrates that you have no other plan and causes one to wonder what exactly would happen to our company if you and your nominees were to take control of Yahoo.”

Well, it is a good point, but hardly one that makes me cheer for the Yahoo side to win.

And then again yesterday, in a letter to shareholders about the upcoming annual meeting, Yahoo gave this limp defense for not backing Icahn, without including new ideas of why its incumbent board deserved a second chance:

“Given Microsoft’s stated position of not wanting to acquire Yahoo, the election of Mr. Icahn’s slate could result in substantial erosion of stockholder value.”

Apparently, there is one thing the pair do seem to agree on, and so do I: A substantial erosion of shareholder value seems inevitable as this caterwauling continues.