Category: media

BBC bosses are defending their proposals for license renewal. Among them is a plan to increase the yearly licence fee to £180 by 2013. The demands of the digital switchover placed the BBC in “unprecedented circumstances”, they said.

Colin McGinn argues that we’re wired to like them. “Movies offer us a transformed reality in which the body is stripped of its material bonds and becomes united with our essential nature as centers of consciousness.”

“Memoirs of a Geisha has China censors stumped, with officials and state press saying yesterday the film may be banned due to concerns that it could rouse anti-Japanese sentiments. Several state newspapers reported that the movie… was scheduled for general release on Feb. 19 but that had now been scrapped. The main issue of concern is that two leading actresses who play geishas are Chinese, which could evoke memories of Japanese wartime aggression toward mainland women.”

Do-it-yourself digital video technology was supposed to have brought a new brand of populism to alternative filmmaking by now, but there haven’t been many high-profile success stories as yet. Still, this year’s edition of the Sundance Festival may well be a hint of the digital video revolution yet to come…

Big Issues. Serious issues. “Movies honored at the Globes offer a peek into the industry 18 months ago, when film executives were on high alert about the war, about the election, about the growing divide in the country. It was way back then that feel-good, the vibe that Hollywood is largely in the business of manufacturing, took on this new gravitas.”

The WB network is in dire straits. This season its audience has dropped by eight percent. That follows a drop of nearly 10 percent last season. It’s now behind former last-place network UPN, and the network is cutting staff.

It’s a Canadian TV show in which contestants try to convince former Prime Ministers they have what it takes to run the country. “The contest has already received hundreds of video submissions from Canadians aged 18 to 29. The show, set to be taped in Toronto on Jan. 30 and airing Feb. 4, will have the former PMs picking a winner from the top five finalists. Policy goals are a big criteria in the contest, but how well the contestants sell themselves to the former PMs is said to be the point of the show. The winner gets $50,000 in cash and a six-month paid internship in both the public and private sector.”

Why did this year’s Golden Globes seem so lacklustre? “Despite the hard evidence to the contrary, TV shows and movies still maintain the symbol of the shared experience; it’s partly what award shows are for, to honor what we talk about. Except that that equation doesn’t so much exist anymore.”

Music videos, so much the hot thing in the 1980s era of MTV, have lost much of their influence. “While music videos have declined in value as promotional tools, they have fuelled the profiles of a new school of short-form auteurs, to the point where their works can now be savoured in a more rarefied context than in the frenetic flow on music channels.”

“The glass ceiling in Hollywood is no secret. Some actresses succeed in breaking through, but they still find it a daunting challenge to escape Hollywood’s requisites to satisfy the youth culture.”