Category: media

“While plenty of top-quality programmes always have been and always will be cancelled — even the mighty Seinfeld came close to the chop early in its run, and the fondly remembered My So-Called Life was cut after one season — the culling seems to have been unusually rampant and heartless of late.” But some of these shows ae finding new life on DVD.

“Contemporary gospel — an upbeat, jazz-and-R&B-tinged music that, if you don’t listen to the lyrics, could pass for the hit black music that was popular before the hegemony of hip-hop — is one of the fastest-growing formats in America’s big cities. A form of programming that was long relegated to weak-signaled stations at the top of the AM dial is popping up on big signals on FM, where the music can reach a much younger audience.”

“Europe’s largest film studio, Pinewood Studios Group of London, is expected to open a major new studio complex in west-end Toronto, giving Hollywood North a badly needed lift.”

Right wing radio talk show hosts go on the attack over the firing of Don Imus last week. “The body politic can no longer tolerate a dangerous demagogue who repeatedly utters inflammatory comments. But that person, they said, is not Imus but one of his sharpest critics in the recent controversy: the Rev. Al Sharpton.”

“There are moments that really remind you that different people see the world in vastly different ways. Take the £45,000 grand piano that fell off a truck and smashed to bits this week. … Why are piano mishaps so hilarious? Partly it’s run-of-the-mill schadenfreude at seeing expensive objects smashed to bits. But mainly, I suspect, it’s because we have been trained by the movies to find shattered pianofortes, in particular, funny.”

Why are vicious scenes of torture in movies suddenly considered entertaining? How can anyone watch one human being torture another in hideously realistic fashion and not head straight for the exit? “The most troubling part of this wave is how brazenly torture is presented. Many of the depictions are gratuitous and exploitative; others are more restrained. But rarely is the subject dealt with critically, or as something more than a visual provocation.”

Mere months after a federal judge ruled that it is illegal to produce unauthorized, “sanitized” versions of feature films with profanity and sexual content edited out, the practitioners who sparked the case are back at it. ” Thanks, in large part, to what they say is a loophole in copyright law that allows cuts for educational purposes, some of the companies that were ordered to turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios instead are scrubbing more movies, and other firms are getting into the market.”

It’s rare that a TV program, especially a miniseries, can actually have a lasting impact on the fabric of a nation. But thirty years after it first aired on ABC, Roots, the powerful drama about the life of American slaves, is still seen as a major cultural flashpoint. Not only did it change television’s willingness to tackle tough issues, “it changed historical research… partly because it focused on African-Americans and partly because it focused on the stories of everyday people.”

“PBS promised yesterday to amend Ken Burns’ coming documentary series on World War II to include stories about Latino veterans after activists complained he ignored their contributions to the U.S. effort. Burns has also agreed to hire a Latino producer to help create the additional content.”

It wasn’t too long ago that the very idea of a large English-speaking audience embracing a film in a foreign language was laughable. But recent successes prove that “the subtitled film is no longer rooted in notions of esoteric creative worth, tortured self-expression or the possibility of enduring duff movies for a paltry provocative glimpse of Euro-flesh. Instead, the subtitled movie has met the masses, and vice versa.”