Category: media

“Industry insiders claim that Sony spent $350 million or more on production alone. With marketing and promotion factored in, the total price tag will approach half a billion dollars–positioning Spider-Man 3 as the most expensive movie of all time. (Cleopatra, the 1963 epic that has long held the title of priciest picture, had an inflation-adjusted budget of $290 million.)”

Russia’s largest independent radio network has a new mandate for its newscasts: 50 percent of the news must be good. “When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

“Dan Pritzker — a billionaire’s son best known as founder of and guitarist for the off-center soul-rock band Sonia Dada, and an important investor in the project as well as its director — has never made a movie.” But his first effort is ambitious: “Eccentric in concept, ambitious in scope and not cheap — backers put the cost at more than $10 million — the twin pictures will probably stretch the limit of what independent film can do by the time they are seen on festival or commercial screens next year.”

“For decades one of the world’s most trusted brands, Sony ran into problems when it failed to react to the technological changes that transformed the markets where it had scored two of its biggest successes — Trinitron televisions and Walkman music players. As consumers switched to flat-screen LCD TVs and the iPod, Sony was plunged into loss — an analogue company in a digital world.”

WKRP in Cincinnati has been released on DVD. But all of its pop music has been replaced by generic fare. Why? Rights. “Some might consider it ironic that a series with such a relentless anti-automation agenda has had its soundtrack replaced by the kind of synthetic tune that the DJs railed against in episode after episode. Wherever Fever is today, up or down the dial, he can’t feel good that his legacy has been tarnished.”

The dismantling of Clear Channel continues. “The sale comes as Clear Channel considers a nearly $19.5 billion private equity buyout offer for the company. Bidders Thomas H. Lee and Bain Capital raised their offer for the company earlier this week, though it is unclear whether it will persuade enough shareholders to support the deal.”

A day after the Washington Post reported that filmmaker Ken Burns had agreed to recut the footage of his new documentary on World War II to include additional information on minority soldiers, Burns and PBS are denying the report, saying that the film “is complete.” The activists who had demanded the changes remain angry.

Directors vying for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival will include Quentin Tarantino, Gus van Sant, and Hong Kong director Wang Kar Wei. Cannes has also announced the lineup of films that will appear out of competition, including a new documentary by controversial leftist filmmaker Michael Moore.

Documentarian Ken Burns has responded to pressure from Hispanic activists, saying that he will recut his soon-to-be-screened World War II documentary to include information on Latino and Native American soldiers, rather than presenting the additional footage apart from the main film, as he originally planned.

Film festivals are, at their best, an embarrassment of riches, a ridiculous feast that must be consumed carefully and sparingly if one is to preserve one’s sanity and love of film. Unless you’re film critic Dylan Hicks, in which case you should attend 30 screenings in nine days and then write about the experience.