Category: media

The talk of Hollywood in the wake of the Oscar nominations announcement is the snub of the critically acclaimed Dreamgirls in the Best Picture category, despite eight other nominations. “Was the Oscar campaign too heavy-handed? Did the musical not appeal to enough men? Or did simply not enough academy voters think it was best picture-worthy?”

Sundance 2007 may have started off slowly, but all of a sudden, a buying frenzy has erupted. “The first five days of the festival have seen more than $30-million worth of deals.”

Catholic sect Opus Dei, which mounted a campaign against The DaVinci Code claiming that the plot portrayed the group unfairly, is in the news again, this time complaining about a BBC drama in which two members of Opus Dei are depicted as being involved in a double murder.

Canada’s actors union has been on strike for two weeks. With negotiations stalled, producers say they will “ask the Ontario Provincial Court to rule on the legality of the two-week-old strike and on continuation letters the union has signed to allow some productions to continue work despite the strike.”

The musical “Dreamgirls” led Academy Awards contenders Tuesday with eight nominations, but surprisingly was shut out for best picture, positioning the ensemble drama “Babel” or the mob saga “The Departed” as potential front-runners.

“Dan Glickman says the changes in the movie ratings system he announced [at the Sundance Film Festival] Monday were not inspired by the Sundance documentary ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated,’ which trashed the ratings body that grades films G, PG, R, etc., as a super-secret, censorious cabal that suffocates filmmakers — and gives violent movies a pass while being too strict about sex.”

Washington, D.C., commercial radio station WGMS dropped its classical-music programming Monday, but that night a noncommercial station went classical, aided by the owner of WGMS. The company “said it struck the unusual agreement with noncommercial WETA to prevent classical music from disappearing from local airwaves. Such an alliance between for-profit and a nonprofit radio stations is almost unheard of.”

“Whether it’s [Jennifer] Hudson, lonelygirl15 or Jade Goody, the foul-mouthed ex-nurse who … is just as celebrated in England as Posh Spice, celebrity has been rudely down-marketed and democratized. As Aaron Sorkin so eloquently put it the other day, complaining about the blogger influence on media coverage of his ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’ TV drama: ‘We live in the age of amateurs.’ “

For two years, M dot Strange posted a YouTube video blog, detailing the progress of the movie he was making. When the film premiered at Sundance, “quite a few members of the audience left midmovie.” But this was hardly a measure of his fan base. “Kevin Donahue, vice president of content at YouTube, said M dot Strange has created an audience in part by talking to it.”

“More than half of the top 25 radio stations in Chicago were sold or put on the block in 2006, marking an unprecedented ownership turnover in a single year.”