Category: media

“Denver ranks third in the U.S. for moviegoing per capita. Good news. According to recent market research, one out of four area adults has attended at least one movie in the past 30 days. That’s 530,000 people. But there are signs that Denver could be not just a better movie town but a great one.”

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has removed the controversial host of a Sunday arts program two weeks after she had a heated on-air exchange with British playwright Steven Berkoff. “Less than a minute into the exchange, things became tense when Razer addressed Berkoff as ‘dear’. He told her he had trouble understanding her accent. Razer then called the playwright a ‘curmudgeon’ and a ‘pugilist’, before abruptly terminating the interview.”

“A strike that brought Bollywood film production to a halt has been called off, unions and employers say. Union leader Dinesh Chaturvedi told the BBC News website that managers had agreed to their demands.”

The CBC is looking for a new theme song for its iconic Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, after being outbid by rival CTV for the rights to the decades-old theme that every Canadian knows as well as the national anthem. After putting out a call for new themes, the CBC has selected five finalists, orchestrated them, and invited the public to vote on the winner.

If there’s one word that describes the philosophy behind the CBC’s revamp of formerly all-classical Radio 2, it’s eclecticism. But is so much diversity of musical style leading to an incoherent sound? “The playlists… often sound as if they’ve been put together simply to include all the kinds of listeners that the CBC wants to attract.”

“People read a lot of on-screen text. You’re doing it now. I read thousands of words a day to bring these posts to you. We all read messages on tiny telephone screens. So our brains are trained for it. But does this translate to subtitles?”

“The Writers Guild of America West said Thursday that it had filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Tyler Perry’s production studio after it fired four writers for the popular TBS situation comedy, ‘House of Payne’ who were seeking union representation.”

“Film buffs may see a silver lining in America’s current financial crisis: After all, the Great Depression produced some of the best movies in Hollywood history. … While it’s always risky connecting politics and popular culture, the linkage in 1930s movies is obvious. Bread lines, juvenile delinquency, gangsterism, populism, nativism — all these and more were staples on the screen.”

Crisis in the Credit System is “a 40-minute online drama described by its makers as ‘bizarre scenarios reflecting the strangeness of our situation today: life governed increasingly by abstract exchange and the accumulation of profit’. Confused? You will be, almost certainly.”

“Once considered a relative backwater as a film destination, Michigan has lured more than 60 features and made-for-TV movies this year, up from just three last year, according to the Michigan Film Office.”