Category: media

“The actors union said it would advise celebrity nominees and presenters to boycott the show, which is scheduled to be televised Jan. 13 on NBC. That would rob the boozy, informal affair of the star power that makes the Globes the official kickoff to Hollywood’s awards season.”

“In the last few years,” Penn said, “it seems there has been a rejuvenation of cinema building worldwide; increasingly thoughtful, provocative, moving, and imaginative films by talented filmmakers: that a new generation of filmmaking may have begun.

Hollywood had a good year at the box office. Sort of. Revenue was up, but attendance was flat. “Movie fans bought about 1.42 billion tickets last year, according to Media by Numbers. The high watermark of the last 10 years came in 2002, when moviegoers bought about 1.61 billion tickets.”

“While Wednesday’s late-night revival marks an attempt by some in the television industry to return to business-as-usual, what few observers have begun to analyze is the way the current strike is poised to affect — and perhaps decimate — this year’s movie awards season.”

Many actors support the Hollywood writers in their strike. “But the top-tier actors have universally declined to pick up a sign. Other than a momentary appearance by Ben Stiller, not a single top-tier movie star — including some rather high-profile WGA hybrids — has found it prudent to say or do anything publicly to support the writers’ cause.”

“It is coming on January 17 or thereabouts. It is a new and monstrous phenomenon, bound to frighten even the most seasoned of marketing men. Already it is stalking the boardrooms of leading Hollywood studios, unleashing terror. It is the spectre of a film with no name, a film that may prove a peculiar truth in 2008: that the best way to market a product to a young and wired generation is not to market it at all.”

“My hunch is that modern TV producers fear flip-happy viewers will take any excuse to surf away from a show and sample other channels. Eliminating the theme song is just another way to deal with the multitude of channels and remote control technology offered today’s consumer, locking them into an unfolding show before they even realize it has begun.”

“Because the cinema — with its outsize scale, sensory immersion and heightened realism — tends to colonize our imaginations so completely, biographical and historical dramas are graded on a higher curve than any other genres.”

“For the first time in recent memory, Germans spent less time in front of their TVs than they had the year before. And German kids watched significantly less television, boding ill for the future of the medium.”

U.S. and Canadian theaters this weekend set a record for yearly ticket sales, taking in an estimated $9.59 billion.