Category: media

“The Australian government announced plans Tuesday to bring the future to the Land Down Under by spending up to $31 billion ($43 billion AUS) over eight years to create a nationwide fiber optic and wireless broadband network.”

“Anyone repeatedly caught illegally downloading films and music in France could be cut off from the internet if a new bill is passed by parliament this week. The bill would give French authorities powers to trace illegal downloads and cut repeat offenders off from the internet for a period of two months to one year.” Passage is expected.

“Business is booming at the nation’s movie theaters. Revenue and ticket sales are each up about 10 percent over the first quarter of last year. Box office records have been smashed. Why are movies doing so well while so many people are doing so poorly?”

“More than 100 students cheered swashbuckling and sex-crazed pirates in a pornographic film that screened at the University of Maryland on Monday night – a film that, at various points in the past week, state lawmakers and the university tried to suppress. University administrators, who canceled a planned showing of Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge last week…, reversed their position Monday and allowed the screening as long as it included an educational component.”

Entertainment blogger Roger Friedman “has parted company with Fox News after a controversial post in which he reviewed a leaked, incomplete version of 20th Century Fox’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine.'” The post “drew instant fire from the blogosphere for what was seen as a tacit promotion of the download” and “was particularly bothersome to News Corp., the parent company of both Fox News and 20th Century Fox.”

To create the video game “Six Days in Fallujah,” developers “tapped dozens of soldiers who were involved in the real-life 2004 battle for the Iraqi city to add realism to their action game, which the company plans to release next year. … As the capabilities of videogame hardware have burgeoned, the bar for realism in games has been raised. But Atomic Games wants its new release to be more than a game. The company sees it as a new kind of documentary.”

“I’ve seen just about every narrative movie in the current 3-D crop, and every single one has caused me some degree of discomfort–ranging from minor eye soreness (Coraline) to intense nausea (My Bloody Valentine). The egregious side effects of stereo viewing may well have been diminished over the past few decades,” but they haven’t been banished — because the technology hasn’t fundamentally changed.

“Some industry watchers, a few of them still griping about the hefty $7.4 billion that Disney paid for Pixar in 2006, are fretting about the film’s commercial potential, particularly when it comes to benefiting other Disney businesses.”

“Salaries are being slashed now in Hollywood and even bigger stars are not immune. ‘Why would anybody pay Julia Roberts $20 million to do Duplicity?’ says one producer. ‘That won’t happen again’.”

“The proposed three-year agreement, which was widely anticipated, provides a 5% pay increase, contains about $21 million in increased contributions to union health and pension plans and, for the first time, establishes a pay structure for work made for the Internet and other new media, according to the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.”