Category: media

Movie previews are so last decade. Sure, a few people might watch your trailer and remember your movie months later when it hits theaters, but wouldn’t it be more effective to create an entire online universe in which your movie is secretly the center of the action, and challenge gamers and hackers and lurkers to discover the truth behind the ominous mystery you’ve placed before them, and to do it all with a veneer of seriousness that makes the participants feel like they’re actually part of something? Well, wouldn’t it?

A new wave of films focusing either on the war in Iraq or the fallout from the conflict at home is preparing to sweep through Hollywood. That such movies are being made before the war is even concluded is an indication that the industry is hoping to embrace the immediacy of modern media, while the emotions inspired by the hugely unpopular war are still fresh.

Worldwide movie theatre rentals “soared 20.9% to $7.95 billion in 2006, setting a record for the six MPA companies by beating 2004’s $7.48 billion. The returns highlight the industry’s comeback from 2005’s year of the slump that saw rentals dip to $6.57 billion. Rental revenue in 2006 was equally divided between the domestic and foreign markets, with the U.S. accounting for $3.970 billion and the international market, including Canada, for $3.976 billion.”

Disney says it will ban smoking in its movies for kids. And smoking will be “discouraged” in films aimed at adults released under its Touchstone and Miramax banners.

An extremely rainy June has contributed to a 38 percent increase in DVD sales in Britain. “Overall sales rose by 12.6% in the first six months of the year, during which 108 million DVDs were sold.”

Film production was worth £4.3bn to the country’s economy last year, research released by the UK Film Council has suggests. “This came through tourism, employment and exports, and was up from £3.1bn in 2004, the organisation said.”

“For decades, multi-cam comedies have been a prime-time staple as much for their hit-making potential as for the relatively cheap production costs, but the shows, filmed before live studio audiences, have fallen out of fashion. Rising to take the few remaining network comedy spots has been the single-camera style, whose movie-like freedom and ease can be seen in such critically acclaimed programs as “30 Rock,” “The Office” and “Arrested Development.” With a welcome change in pacing and no laugh-track-sweetened live audience, single-camera exudes a sophisticated cool that executives believe appeals to the prized and more tech-savvy 18-to-49 demographic.”

“More than 5,000 historic images, dating from the 1930s to the 1970s, have been discovered in a vault at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire. Two battered old metal filing cabinets, which had remained unopened for as long as anyone can remember, were found to be wedged full of images. Some of the photographs are so early, they are still on glass plates. Others appear on strips of negatives.”

A hundred years ago Chicago built a thriving movie industry. And then… it moved to Hollywood. “The central location; the center of a transportation hub; the idea of raw materials coming in and being transformed into something else and then getting shipped out — that’s Chicago.

“More and more papers are replacing homegrown TV writers with AP and Tribune Media Services copy. One critic jokes that Frazier Moore and David Bauder of the Associated Press are now ‘America’s critics,’ thanks to so many papers’ reliance on their work. TV Guide senior critic Matt Roush says the push for localism is logical, but silencing TV crix in the process is anything but.