Category: media

“Pixar had become the ultimate example of Hollywood synergy: the studio as star.The lamp’s bulb has been dimming, though. “Nemo” held its box-office crown only a year, thanks to ‘Shrek 2.’ Since then, Pixar releases have lost the almost-reflexive pop-cultural cachet they had had. At least some of that cachet has gone to Dream Works Animation, with its ‘Shrek’ franchise.”

“In the last year broadcast networks, cable channels and television content providers have all set up camp in virtual communities, where they hope that viewers who have forsaken television for computer screens might rediscover their programming online. Some outlets, like Showtime and Sundance, are establishing themselves in existing worlds; others, like MTV, are creating their own. Either way, if the wildest dreams of some very excited technology developers come true, virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web.”

“The film world is at loggerheads over plans to sell off the British Film Institute’s London headquarters – as the organisation struggles to cope with a financial crisis insiders believe is a result of the arts budget being raided to help fund the 2012 Olympics.”

“Talks on an international treaty updating broadcast rights to accommodate the Internet failed Friday because countries were unable to agree how much legal and technological protection to afford broadcasters.”

“Arbitron’s portable people meter technology detects inaudible signals embedded in radio and television broadcasts to measure a listener’s exposure to media and is designed to replace paper diaries. Such data is used as the basis for setting advertising rates on radio shows.”

Angelina Jolie is currently on the big screen playing the part of Marianne Pearl, “a French-born, brown-skinned, kinky-curly-haired woman of Afro-Cuban and Dutch heritage. Ponder the societal implications of Jolie sporting a spray tan and a corkscrew wig. Discuss: Is this the latest entry in the American canon of blackface –21st-century style? Or does Jolie’s color-bending turn as the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl herald a sea change in our racial consciousness?”

Hollywood has never been shy when it comes to stereotyping non-white characters, especially in time of war. As one young filmmaker puts it, “In every movie they make, every time an Arab utters the word Allah? Something blows up.” A new documentary tirelessly (some would say obsessively) highlights the industry’s one-dimensional treatment of Arab characters.

Internet radio stations around the world will be going silent this Tuesday, in protest over new rules that could put many of them out of business permanently. “The Copyright Royalty Board ruled earlier this year to increase the fees Internet stations pay to record labels and artists to a flat fee for every track played. The increase is retroactive for the prior 17 months.”

“On the brink of closing one of the biggest deals in the history of Canadian entertainment – the sale of Alliance Atlantis’s Motion Picture Distribution arm, also known as MPD, to Manhattan-based investment house Goldman Sachs – many of the most powerful names in Canadian film and TV are claiming that the sale of such a heavyweight distributor to a foreign company could decimate the industry here. And they’re demanding Ottawa do something about it.”

Much has been made of the extreme brutality and unapologetic torture that goes on throughout such new-wave horror movies as Hostel 2. But do mental health professionals really believe that such over-the-top violence is dangerous to those of us living in the real world? A group of Boston psychiatrists watched the film, and concluded that normal, healthy people wouldn’t be inspired by the brutaility. Still, “by fusing the erotic and violent, there are ways you create fantasies that become a playground for serial killers.”