Category: media

“The victory of ‘The Departed’ at the Oscars on Sunday night represented many things,” David Carr opines, and one of them is this: “Old-line Hollywood studios, confronted over the last few years by indifferent audiences and an insurgent collection of independent film makers, declared dominion over the industry’s crowning event.”

British authorities have launched an investigation into the purchase of a significant stake in the ITV network by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s satellite TV company, BSkyB. The cabinet minister in charge of the investigation says that the purchase “”raises public interest concerns about the number of different owners of media enterprises,” but BSkyB officials are said to be furious at the apparent effort to block their expansion.

Fespaco, Africa’s largest and most successful film festival, has opened its 19th season in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. “Cinemas have been closing in many African countries, leading the monthly magazine Continental to describe the African film industry as ‘in crisis’. For many involved in the film industry, Fespaco has become a hugely important event.”

“When Univision began broadcasting a show three years ago about the misadventures of 11-year-old identical twin girls who swapped identities after discovering they had been separated at birth, it characterized the episodes as educational programming for children. That decision is expected to cost Univision, the nation’s largest Hispanic network, $24 million” in FCC fines.

It was a big Oscar night for Martin Scorsese, who finally won best director, and his latest film, The Departed, which took home the best picture trophy. But there’s been much talk within the business that Scorsese’s win amounts to a lifetime achievement award, rather than a real reflection of The Departed‘s quality as a stand-alone film. But as a genre film, Departed is likely to stand the test of time.

The rise of online video, while it has opened many virtual doors, is also creating a bandwidth logjam that threatens to slow the internet to a crawl if it continues unchecked. Peer-to-peer file-trading sites, which are used by a small percentage of the online population but account for more than half of all internet traffic, are largely to blame.

“If anyone needed definitive proof that Hollywood has gone international, the Academy Awards provided it. Never in the ceremony’s 79 years have so many artists from other lands been among the nominees… While directing, best picture and most acting awards went to Americans, international artists had a strong presence in many categories. [Helen] Mirren led the way with her win for best actress.”

“Something’s up with Oscar. Hollywood’s golden guy isn’t the populist he once was. Last year, as Crash and Brokeback Mountain duked it out for best picture at the Academy Awards, the grumblings about independent flicks crashing Hollywood’s big party began getting louder. It’s more than a coincidence that at the same time this tut-tutting is going on about the Oscars, a number of critics and indie-film aficionados bemoan what they see as the increasingly mercantile aspects of the Sundance Film Festival.”

“The Plow That Broke the Plain (1936) and The River (1937) will make die-hard liberals long for the time when the government really knew how to produce propaganda on behalf of worthy causes. For a brief while, to propagate its domestic programs, the Roosevelt administration went into the movie business.”

“The misfit family of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ cruised to easy victory yesterday afternoon at the Spirit Awards, where the road-trip comedy won prizes for best feature, directors, supporting actor Alan Arkin and first screenplay.” Ali Selim’s ‘Sweet Land,’ which has yet to find a distributor despite critical praise on the festival circuit, took the prize for best first feature.