Category: media

“What makes a film truly erotic? Unrequited longing, transgression, voyeurism? Can men and women ever agree? And why are film polls on the subject always so disappointing?” Director Sophie Fiennes’s latest project, “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,” attempts to find a serious set of answers on a subject that’s usually only giggled over.

A Canadian magazine recently published an article laying out a long list of ways in which the Internet has supposedly failed to live up to the lofty expectations set out for it. The article “implies that a world without the Internet would be a world free of pornography, gambling, copyright violations, plagiarism, fraud, infidelity, pedophilia and partisan political bickering.” But is such a blanket declaration of failure missing the point?

One of the stiffest challenges facing radio stations is how to embrace new technologies without losing gobs of money on them. Even something as simple as an internet stream of live programming costs more money than the listener will ever know, and those streams usually generate little to no additional income. But for Seattle jazz station KPLU, online streaming has opened up unforeseen avenues of new listenership and, by extension, new revenue.

In a presumed show of solidarity with its neighbor, Kazakhstan, Russian film officials are threatening to prevent the satirical movie, Borat, from screening in Russia. The film, in which actor Sacha Baron Cohen portrays a bumbling, anti-Semitic Kazakh “journalist,” has been denounced by Kazakh politicians, who are upset at the portrayal of their little-known country as a backwards backwater.

“Warner Brothers International cinemas operates six cinemas with local partners and had planned to expand that to about 30, encouraged by a 2003 policy letting foreign investors hold up to 75 percent of cinema ventures in selected cities.”

After announcing it would start offering ways to buy ads in newspapers, Google says it’s also getting into the radio ad busines. “Google is generally testing its ability to move into offline media, saying this week that it would help customers buy advertisements in 50 U.S. newspapers.”

“Movie and television studios, facing escalating budgets, rampant piracy and the uncertain future of new media, are demanding concessions from talent. But as actors, directors and writers feel the squeeze, many are not happy about it. Worse, the tension is not likely to ease soon. As studios are set to begin contract negotiations with talent in January, all sides are girding for battle.”

“The Federal Communications Commission changed its mind and dismissed charges against two television shows it had deemed indecent but upheld its findings against two others.”

L.A.’s conservative Liberty Film Festival, now in its third year, “still seems a few years away from being a real cinematic force,” Patrick Goldstein writes. The festival’s website, on the other hand, “has emerged as a must read for anyone who cares about film and enjoys seeing Hollywood blowhards and hypocrites take a few jabs to the head. I couldn’t agree less with most of its politics, but in an era in which most movie sites are dominated by gossips and geeks, Libertas is one of the few websites that actually takes movies — and their cultural influence — seriously.”

Janus Films’ 50th-anniversary collection of 50 movies on DVD represents a significant chunk of cinematic history — “films like Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Avventura,’ François Truffaut’s ‘400 Blows,’ Fritz Lang’s ‘M,’ Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ and Luis Buñuel’s ‘Viridiana,’ along with dozens of others that constitute the backbone of the art house tradition.” So how did the little indie distributor compile such a catalogue? “At a time when rights to a foreign film in the United States could be had for less than $50,000, (the company) set about systematically acquiring the most prestigious films available, including some Hollywood classics.”