Category: media

“The nation’s largest telephone and Internet service provider also operates the biggest cross-country system for handling Internet traffic for its customers and those of other providers. As AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company has realized that its interests are more closely aligned with Hollywood.”

“Of Disney’s $34bn annual revue, about $1.5bn is classed as digital – but $800m of that is online sales of holiday packages. That leaves a relatively measly $700m of true digital media revenue. That doesn’t put off Disney. Not only is the digital sector growing fast, it is also hitting the advertisers’ sweet spot.”

Universal Pictures is being accused of firing an assistant director because he is black. ” ‘I was treated and hailed to a different standard on this film. I think Hollywood has a different standard for people of colour.’ Universal Pictures has insisted that Mr Davis was dismissed purely on the basis of his inability to do the job.”

A PBS movie about the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors was edited into different versions depending on which country it would be aired in. Okay, so there are different partners on the project. But why do the different versions tell different versions of history?

“Despite Apple TV’s promise, some of the biggest movie studios won’t sell their films through Apple’s iTunes store. They fear that the Cupertino, Calif., company will come to dominate online distribution of movies as it now controls more than 70% of the digital-music market in the United States. If it does, that could drive down the prices of newly released DVDs, which is great for consumers but bad business for the movie studios.”

“The statisticians who compare domestic openings have refined their comparisons; three-day weekends, four-day holiday weekends, etc. are all clearly delineated. But the definition of worldwide day-and-date openings — with different countries debuting movies on different days of the week — has yet to be fully outlined. The intense focus on worldwide openings also obscures how movies have been doing in subsequent weeks domestically, where the competition has been a lot tougher than it has been abroad.”

“As television collectors large and small continue to digitize and upload thousands of rare old film reels and videotapes, YouTube is threatening to become a repository of television history that could rival the nation’s leading broadcast museums, both in the scope of its offerings and in the number of people it can reach.”

“How do you take a bunch of middle-aged men (Bruce Willis is 52, Sylvester Stallone is 60 and Harrison Ford is 65) with saggy skin, creaking bones, thinning hair, paunches and back problems, and make them seem like taut, high-kicking, death-defying action stars? How do you make Ford dodging spears and dashing through the jungle look credible? How do you put the wow factor into Willis leaping from a moving plane? And how do you shoot Stallone in a tight T-shirt and headband, waving an enormous gun around, without it seeming, well, silly?”

Reviews of the new comedy, Knocked Up, have been largely positive, and yet, a significant number of reviewers and commentators have taken issue with yet one more movie in which a drop-dead gorgeous woman falls for a guy best described as homely. Peter Howell fails to understand why this plot device irritates so many: “If you’ve spent any time at all on this Earth, you know that all kinds of couplings are possible. You also know that women are generally far more forgiving of a man’s failings than men are of women’s foibles, especially in the looks department.”

“Call it a market correction. Call it a slump. Call it audience fatigue with a subpar rash of crazed killers, wanton vampires and jiggling coeds, but horror, one of Hollywood’s enduring staples, is tanking.”