Category: media

“Along with hosting fewer lavish premiere parties, curtailing newspaper advertisements and restricting the number of agencies that produce trailers, the Hollywood studios are struggling to get a grip on the movie industry’s equivalent of the pork barrel earmark: marketing budgets.”

“A Hollywood film director who pleaded guilty three years ago to lying to the FBI in connection with the Anthony Pellicano investigation, then withdrew his plea, was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.”

“German composer Frank Peterson has filed a lawsuit at the Higher District Court in Hamburg against Google/YouTube, claiming that his music videos and other audiovisual repertoire were used illegally.”

“A Stockholm court found the four defendants guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through The Pirate Bay, which means they will have to pay compensation to 17 different music and media companies including Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner, MGM and 20th Century Fox.”

Newspapers occupy a beloved place in the heart of moviemakers, possibly because so many journalists went on to become screenwriters and directors.

“The agreements with the studios, which include Sony, Lions Gate, MGM and others, are significant because YouTube dominates online video. Nearly two-thirds of all video views in the United States occur on YouTube, according to the measurement firm Nielsen. Last month the site had more than 90 million visitors, 10 times as many as the next biggest site, comScore said.”

“Technologies like Second Life are allowing us to rethink what being ‘together’ really means. They’re inverting our laws of attraction, thrusting us into a zone where desire can be more abstract than pure physical lust, and where intimacy begins not with a partner’s touch, but with the things that usually come much later – the emotional candor that can take years to achieve.”

“Normally, rampant texting in a movie theater is grounds for ejection. But in St. Charles, it’s encouraged. During a screening of ‘Zoolander,’ audience members could heckle the movie via text, then watch as their comments appeared onscreen with the film.” It’s called MuVChat, and its inventor describes it as “a mash-up of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ and Twitter.”

“When the average infomercial shopper (who earns $51,000 a year) picks up that phone, he is choosing a Slanket over a Snuggie, yes, but also, maybe even half-consciously, voting for the sales routine itself, as if the Slanket ad were an endearing American Idol contestant.”

“There was a time when mobile phones were used simply to communicate. In high-speed Japan, where more than 100 million people own mobile phones, they are not only a platform for novelists, but for all forms of artistic expression. Manga – comic art – is a major part of the Japanese publishing industry” and a presence on mobiles, while “street artists also create designs specifically for mobiles.” There’s also the pocket film.