Category: media

Using a mini-DVD camera Sydney Pollack has made a documentary of architect Frank Gehry. “After many offers from various Canadian, American and British filmmakers, Frank Gehry’s decision to ask Sydney Pollack to consider directing such a documentary occurred when he realized that the filmmaker had taken the best photos of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. At first, Pollack didn’t want the job. ‘I didn’t feel literate as a documentarian. I certainly didn’t feel literate architecturally — this would be a really dumb thing for me to do’.”

Quebec’s “Radio-Canada this week ended one of the longest traditions in network television by replacing its suppertime newscast with a light-hearted talk show hosted by a popular blond starlet and Chatty Cathy of Quebec’s celebrity circuit. On the one hand, who can blame the network? Radio-Canada’s news broadcasts had been getting hammered for years by the private competition. Replacing the news with Véro, the variety hour hosted by Véronique Cloutier, appears to have been a brilliant move. In its first week, Véro drew almost twice as many viewers…”

The good news is that there are plenty of roles for women in the new fall TV season. The bad news is that most of them involve women being beaten, killed, tortured by aliens, impaled, bloodied, assaulted, and kidnapped. Oh, and while they’re still alive, the women of TV tend to be naked, or nearly so. “Trying to get [the Hollywood men who create these delightful female roles] to discuss the Season of Die, Women, Die! can be difficult. Because the men who made the shows, and the suits who ordered them, while not timid about slicing and dicing up the female characters in these drama series, go shy all over when asked about the trend.”

The theme of the season for Hollywood seems to be a return to family, if the crop of films slated for release between now and Christmas are any indication. “Often when Hollywood pursues a trend, it’s to the detriment of filmgoers. It’s glut, rut or both. So such an energetic return to hearth and home, moms and pops, might suggest a bottom line-inspired recoil from the world’s rough challenges. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time cinema used the American family as a barricade erected to protect our fantasies of security and fidelity. But many of the films in this bumper crop don’t signal retreat, but a willful engagement. And not a limited one – but an opening-wide one.”

“A new crop of movie entrepreneurs tested their wares at the Toronto International Film Festival over the last week, and several had cause to be pleased with the results.” More impressive, many of the films scoring distribution deals were decidedly independent, with no studio backing at all. “And if Hollywood has expressed skepticism about the affluent neophytes who have entered the business in the past few years – mainly Internet, retail and trust-fund tycoons – this, their first real crop of movies entering the marketplace, may indicate that they have a future in the industry.”

As America and the world become ever more obsessed with fame and the people who have it, it seems that celebrities themselves become increasingly unhappy with their lot. In fact, a stunning number of the films currently on view at the Toronto International Film Festival seem to be about the liability of celebrity, and the great sacrifices one makes in order to be famous. Such navel-gazing may ring hollow with some movie-goers struggling to make ends meet, but Geoff Pevere says that at their best, such films “focus on the spirit-sapping contradictions between being well-known and mortally flawed, of trying to reconcile private needs and public demand.”

The Emmy Awards telecast is coming up this weekend, and from all reports it ought to be one entertaining evening, with the multiple stars of Desperate Housewives battling each other in the same category. But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and with Americans demonstrating a decided fatigue with the culture of self-congratulatory celebrity, will anyone be watching? “Last fall, the Emmy telecast suffered the second-lowest ratings in history. Then the Golden Globe Awards, the People’s Choice Awards and the Grammy Awards were all clobbered in the ratings by original episodes of Housewives, which aired opposite each of the ceremonies.”

The Daytime Emmy Awards are moving to L.A. for 2006, marking the first time the telecast will originate from a city other than New York. Another change: the nominees for the awards, which honor game shows, soap operas, and other tripe, will now be announced on ABC’s The View, which is, of course, eligible for Daytime Emmys itself.

New Orleans public radio station WWOZ isn’t broadcasting over airwaves these days, but the station, now calling itself ”WWOZ in exile,” is still online through the generosity of New Jersey community station WFMU, which is hosting the webcast. ‘We’re playing archival material right now. You may get to hear shows from DJs who haven’t been on the air in decades’.” As well, “since shortly after the hurricane and the levee break that flooded the city, the community station has focused on becoming a true community resource.”

The TV show “American Idol” is charging a record amount for ads on any American television show. “For the new fall season, the cost of a 30-second spot during the Wednesday installment of the program has surpassed the $700,000 mark. For the second year in a row, the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of American Idol are the most expensive shows on network TV.”