Category: media

“Want to buy and download a video? Fine. But Amazon’s Unbox program is going to run in the background on your computer and send information back to the company about your ‘operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity’ as well as what you’re doing with those videos, all in order to continue to ‘manage rights’ associated with them, says the agreement. … But if you somehow you violate their rules? Amazon has the right to reach into your hard drive from afar, delete all the videos you’ve paid for and not give you a refund.”

“Tired of the criticism of his films, controversial German film director Uwe Boll took on four of his critics in a Vancouver boxing ring, and ended each bout with a knockout. The director of the vampire flick ‘BloodRayne,’ based on a video game and starring Kristanna Loken and Ben Kingsley, issued a fight challenge to his critics several months ago. Fifteen responded. ‘I like now the critics,’ Boll said….”

“For generations of Americans, comic books were the first real page-turners. But the audience for their digital counterpart, called Webcomics, has for the most part been limited to a niche group of comic book creators and their most ardent followers. Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the chairman of Platinum Studios, a privately held California entertainment company that develops and adapts comics for other media, wants to change that. … Mr. Rosenberg plans to begin publishing Platinum’s comic books online before they go to press for traditional distribution through stores and newsstands.”

It’s “one of the harshest realities of movie marketing today: It’s almost impossible to recover from bad buzz. Studios wield their marketing campaigns as they always have, priming audiences to expect the best. But with the media following every twist of a movie’s progress, viewers head to theaters loaded with behind-the-scenes information.”

“The rapidly proliferating scofflaws — and there are now hundreds of them broadcasting at any given moment in this country — are usually only audible within a few miles of their “home-brewed” transmitters. They find unused sections of the FM dial, fire up their mini-transmitters, raise their antennas and set up their station. Some opt to broadcast on the internet as well, opening up their audience to the entire globe. Costs typically range from about $250 to $1,500.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently announced that iTunes would start offering movies on iTunes. But only Disney is making movies available. “Jobs’ problem is that the rest of Hollywood still fears alienating retailers, especially Wal-Mart Stores Inc., that sell and rent DVDs, producing half of Hollywood’s revenue. Studios are reluctant for now to publicly endorse something that could speed the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Young American Latinos are “a fast-growing demographic whose taste in entertainment runs from English to Spanish, from American to Latin, and back. And MTV is giving chase.”

“For the first time, tube fans this fall will be able to keep up with most of prime time without watching or recording during prime time. This could be a good or a bad thing, depending on the level of productivity you’re trying to achieve in life, but it is definitely a new thing. Mostly this is happening because television, exhibiting the same survival instincts wooly mammoths used to trundle away from the coming ice age, is in full migration to the Internet.

Animation is serious business in most countries, and while America has no shortage of talented animators, the genre is being held hostage by Hollywood’s insatiable desire to market anything animated to children, says Ty Burr. “Aside from the stray burst of maverick inspiration — Tim Burton’s stop-motion Corpse Bride or Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly — most alternative animation comes from overseas, where grown-up audiences have always been less uptight about the form.”

There was a time when all a movie theater had to do to make money was to run a few ads and show a few movies. But those days are long gone, and increasingly, cinema owners are turning to unconventional events to put butts in the seats. “The future of movie theatres, in fact, seems to have less and less to do with movies as new technology allows cinemas to telecast everything from hockey, wrestling, opera and HBO comedy specials to hosting children’s birthday parties, church services and interactive video games.”