Category: media

A YouTube video in which a well-known actress and playwright verbally obliterates her estranged and much older husband, “the president of Broadway’s Shubert organization, which owns 17 Broadway houses and the National Theatre in Washington,” is garnering thousands of views. And part of what makes it so uncomfortable to watch is the high station of the people involved…

Why is it so hard to make a really good comedy these days? “Do people become less funny if it’s longer than the 20 minutes or so of sitcom time? Or unable to film it? Beats me.”

“Cinema has left its imprint on Palestine, though often it is a ghost-like memory… Palestinian directors have a powerful sense of irony: they are very aware that everything they do will be pored over for evidence of terrorist sympathies; but, rather than collapse into paranoia, the response has been a heightened level of self-conscious wit.”

The FCC is holding hearings on the business practices of internet service providers that block consumer access to certain file-sharing sites. “The investigation and public hearings are the agency’s most serious examination of ‘net neutrality,’ the principle that all Internet traffic be treated equal.”

Telecom giant Comcast, under fire for attempting to assert more control over consumers’ access to the Internet, is proposing a P2P Bill of Rights “to clarify what choices and controls consumers should have when using P2P applications.” Many aren’t buying the company’s apparent benevolence, though…

The Royal Bank of Canada will contribute CAN$11m to the Toronto International Film Festival over a ten-year period. “Certainly the deal is a breakthrough, but the cineastes still have a long way to go before they can declare victory. Even with this mega gift, TIFF’s $196 million campaign (which includes operating costs and an endowment fund) is at least $40 million short of its target.”

“The Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood producers started talks Tuesday on a new contract that the wary entertainment industry hopes can be achieved without a strike… Top SAG officials have indicated they’re intent on negotiating a contract that betters the deals reached by the writers and directors guilds.”

“Things have been wrong in the movie critics’ trade for a while, I think — ever since, in fact, Siskel and Ebert emerged from Chicago newsstand battles into a dreadful and debasing (and popular) Hekyll and Jekyll TV act that popularly defined the trade for decades. Promotion and ridiculous celebrity — in which TV’s movie critics joined the D-list of celebrity that they supposedly wrote about — ran riot. Even so, the worst was yet to come.”

There’s a bit of a shakeup going on behind the scenes in Hollywood, as talent agencies juggle and swap some top talent. “In the last few weeks, the swaps have grown so frequent and significant that many in the industry have been startled by all the big moves, which some say are a reaction to an overall contraction in the movie business.”

NBC is making a point of “bringing back the family hour” of evening television this year. So why does the network appear to be undermining its own stated goal by airing blatant vulgarities in its sitcoms featured in exactly that hour?