Tuya’s Marriage, a Chinese film about a woman and her life in the steppes of Inner Mongolia, has won the Berlin Film festival’s top honour, the Golden Bear.
Category: media
Tough Lessons For The Movie Industry
Hollywood is agressively fighting illegal downloads. But isn’t this counter-productive? “Will Hollywood adapt and survive, or will it continue to escalate its apparently futile battle against the collective intelligence of a million resourceful and highly motivated computer geeks worldwide? (The kind of people who recently unlocked the supposedly resilient copy protection on Hollywood’s new HD DVD format.)”
Does MTV Still Matter?
“As a brand, MTV has been beyond durable, managing to reinvent itself continuously and in doing so presenting a fast-moving target that left many would-be rivals in its wake. But finding the edge was simpler before competition for its core demographic started coming from all fronts, from video games and social-networking Web sites to amateur clips on YouTube.”
And Then There Was One – Sirius To Buy XM
One American satellite radio provider buys the other. “Under the agreement announced by the two companies on Monday, XM shareholders would receive 4.6 Sirius shares for each XM share held, or a 21.7 percent premium to XM’s closing share price of $13.98 on Friday. Sirius would be paying about $4.6 billion in stock for XM based on shares outstanding.”
Writing? It’s Just The Screenwriters…
“Screenwriting is the most solitary of filmmaking roles, but assemble a group of these talented craftsmen and the results are as combustible as they are insightful.”
Resting On Their Laurels (Way Too Many Of Them)
Film fest awards have proliferated so much, they’ve become almost meaningless. “Laurel leaves have spread like weeds, growing most heartily during the run-up to the Oscar nominations. And in their ubiquity, laurels seem to have lost all meaning. Browse today’s movie ads and they’re found stamped on mainstream fare.”
New Software Snoop IDs Copyrighted Material
“The new technological weapon is content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material, even, for example, from blurry video clips. The technology could address what the entertainment industry sees as one of its biggest problems — songs and videos being posted on the Web without permission.”
Mexico’s Swank Movie Palaces
“Once government-controlled and mocked for their decrepit conditions, Mexico’s movie houses have blossomed since deregulation in the mid-1990s. Competition has brought tens of millions of dollars in fresh investment. The swankiest VIP salons are among the best appointed anywhere. Multiplexes are sprouting throughout the country.”
Who Will Provide Video On The Web?
“It has become evident that the question of who will rule video on the Web is incredibly tangled. For now, most of the sticky strands lead to Google, and big media companies are trying to figure out whether to fight it or join it. That already hard question has been complicated by some fresh headaches for Google.”
Oscar’s Colors
The Oscars have struggled with diversity over the years. So will this year’s winners be more diverse? “I think the color barrier is coming down, but it takes a generation or two to die off. It’s a slow process.”