Category: media

In its annual report card on Hollywood’s major movie studios, the LA Times says that Disney and 20th Century Fox have developed a winning formula based on the revolutionary concept of trying to make good movies that people will want to see. Other studios… well… all those pointless sequels have to come from somewhere, right?

“Afghanistan has banned the import and exhibition of The Kite Runner, a film about the troubled friendship of two Afghan boys, on the grounds that it could incite violence… Paramount Vantage released the film last month after delays due to the extraordinary precautions taken to address concerns about the film’s depiction of one boy’s rape.”

“Those of us who have always wondered why award shows have to be so infernally long got our answer on Sunday night at the Golden Globes: they don’t, but all meaning is derived in such matters from the script that goes with such ceremonies.”

NBC’s no-frills, one-hour presentation of the winners Sunday night drew a 4.8 rating and 7 share. That’s a decline of about two-thirds from last year.

“France is the only major European country to exhibit such negative results in DVD sales in ’07, and the DVD market here has seen a 25% decrease in value over the past three years.”

“By the end of 2005, there were fewer than 200 auditoriums equipped with digital-projection equipment in the United States. At the end of 2007, there were about 2,500, and by the end of this year, there’ll be at least double that number.”

“The red carpet plays host to American glamour, commerce, banality, charm and shallowness. The display serves the publicity interests of fashion houses, and apparently a few designers were crying into their bodices over the loss of the Sunday-night dress parade, worried that they wouldn’t be able to move warehouses of lip gloss.”

By airtime, the place was jammed. As the six presenters sat onstage, the photogs clicked like crazy, while a foreign journalist wondered aloud, “Who ARE these people, does anybody know?”

“The mood was mostly subdued in the press conference, filled with several hundred journalists, media executives, HFPA members and celebrity publicists.”

Since taking over from the movie veterans Sherry Lansing and Jonathan Dolgen in early 2005, Brad Grey has sent the studio on a ride that turned queasy even by Hollywood standards.