Category: media

A new study of movie critics and reviews tries to find some common behaviors. “It finds that many film critics, faced with far too many movies to write about, tend to avoid writing reviews of bad films that they’ve seen. At the same time, a few critics, faced with the same overwhelming choice, tend to avoid reviewing good movies that they’ve watched.”

Sometimes, all it takes to doom a film’s box office prospects is a slew of negative reviews in advance of the opening. As a result, more and more studios are bypassing the review process altogether, refusing to give critics an early look at flicks deemed unlikely to win them over, or unlikely to need a critical boost in any case. “In the past, a typical nonscreened movie was a studio mistake dumped to satisfy contractual obligations. Now, nonscreening is more often part of a conscious marketing policy, particularly flicks aimed at teens.”

A newly organized police unit in London will be dedicated exclusively to combating video piracy. “By targeting the financial gains at the heart of film piracy, the Metropolitan Police unit hopes to prevent the funding of criminal activities in other areas.” The unit will be working closely with an advocacy group that fights piracy on behalf of the UK recording industry.

“Surely the greatest aesthetic threat to TV news since Technicolor, high-definition television is nearly 10 times sharper than regular television. About 18 million households now have HDTV-ready sets. By next year, that number could be as high as 50 million, according to some industry estimates. In 2009, when most of the broadcast networks are finished converting their news programs to high-def, much of the viewing public will be able to inspect the enamel on Katie Couric’s teeth, if they are so moved.”

“In one of the more bizarre orders from China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, TV shows and films featuring human actors with animated companions will be banned.”

Medical shows have always been a hit with TV viewers, but doctors are concerned that the latest wave of edgy hospital dramas are misleading viewers, and possibly giving the impression that prescription drugs are something to be played around with…

As documentaries go, What The #$*! Do We Know? was an unlikely hit when it was released in 2005. Dealing in quantum physics, philosophy, and more than a little bit of new-age mumbo-jumbo, the film straddled the line between science and religion just carefully enough to make it the fourth-highest grossing documentary of all time. What most viewers never knew was that What The #$*!… had its roots in a bizarre sect whose followers believe that a 35,000-year-old “spirit warrior” from Atlantis appeared in the kitchen of a Tacoma housewife in 1976.

Fans of the James Bond franchise generally aren’t terribly difficult to please. Give them a suave, hunky leading man, a sexy female sidekick, and plenty of car chases and explosions, and most Bond aficionados are perfectly content. So it was a bit of a surprise this month when a website was launched with the express purpose of organizing a Bond boycott as a protest against the decision to replace popular Bond portrayer Pierce Brosnan with actor Daniel Craig.

“The BBC plans to invest at least £100m in the UK film industry over 10 years. The money will be split between homegrown movie projects and acquiring British films for broadcast on UK TV.” However, the Beeb’s proposal is contingent on the corporation receiving the significant increase in federal funding for which it has asked the UK government.

“After years of sedate stability under Sherry Lansing, Paramount has been rebuilt pretty much from the ground up. In less than a year, virtually every division chief has been replaced, some without warning, as happened to production chief Donald DeLine, who found out from friends that he was being replaced when he was in London on a business trip. Countless staffers have been let go after the studio paid $1.6 billion to acquire DreamWorks last December in a selection process that one staffer described as a human bake sale.”