Category: media

“Why does Hollywood put out virtually all of its best adult-oriented movies in the last 12 weeks of the year? The simple answer: Oscar fever. The industry’s obsession with the Academy Awards, which began as a symbol of achievement and are now a high-powered marketing tool, has transformed the end of the year into the Oscar Follies, offering a legitimate batch of award contenders surrounded by a scrum of hapless pretenders being released at year’s end only because of studio delusions, blind adherence to conventional wisdom and arm-twisting by narcissistic stars and filmmakers. The result is often a bloodbath.”

A parody newscast in the style of “The Daily Show” is winning audiences in Iraq. “Debuting last month during Ramadan, while families gathered to break their fast after sundown, the show, ‘Hurry Up, He’s Dead,’ became the talk of Baghdad, delighting and shocking audiences with its needling of anyone with a hand in Iraqis’ gloomy predicament today. … The show’s success is a testament to the gallows humor with which many Iraqis now view their lives — still lacking basic services and plagued by unrelenting violence more than three years after the American-led invasion.”

Easing government rules to allow more media consolidation would push out niche radio programming such as classical, jazz and gospel music while doing little to improve local TV coverage, new studies say.

“Back in the day, even into the ’90s, shows usually had a ‘main title,’ a 40- to 60-second opening montage that introduced the cast and was often set to music written by a composer. Songs summed up what a show was all about… But now many sitcoms and one-hour dramas are dropping that device. They dive straight into the action, sometimes flashing the show’s title or logo at various points throughout an episode.”

NBC’s decision to stop programming scripted shows at 8 pm is a shock to the industry. “The broad range of programming choices in the 100-channel era has led many to conclude that TV is basking in a second golden age (the first was during the 1950s, when pioneers like Lucille Ball, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar held sway). But NBC’s move suggests that ours is actually a gilded age, and the paint is starting to flake off.”

“What’s so unique about YouTube is that most of the content on the site is this conversation between people. The interesting thing is that the conversations are happening in videos.”

There are some strange and unfamiliar characters in some of this fall’s new primetime TV series. Careful research has revealed that these characters – previously seen in Hollywood only as cartoonish foils and token presences – are called “Republicans.” Some of them are even called “Christian conservatives,” and it is fascinating to watch as their liberal creators attempt to flesh them out.

Filmmaking is an innately collaborative process, so it isn’t surprising that disputes frequently crop up over who really “owns” the creative process behind a film. But an ongoing dustup over the auteurship of the new film Babel is drawing a lot of attention, even outside the navel-gazing film world.

It was five years ago this weekend that Apple unveiled the iPod, and CEO Steve Jobs made a bold prediction that the sleek white gadget would change the world. It took a year for a million iPods to be sold, but ever since then, the device has been the centerpiece of “a revolution that has helped topple the idea that record labels, studios and broadcasters should set the terms for how and when you entertain yourself.”

“NBC executives said they hoped that honing their news-gathering operations would help ward off the dour economic climate that had settled over the newspaper industry. Their aim: to free resources for new digital products and eventually expand their reach.”