Category: media

“Hollywood is hooked on the big opening weekend, but two very wealthy young men would like to break that habit. Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who timed the market nicely when they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have created 2929 Entertainment, which will make, distribute and show films digitally – that is, without using actual film. And instead of using a theatrical release to build a market for DVD and cable broadcast, 2929 plans to release movies in any format you want to see them, on the same day.”

What’s a big driver in the movie business? Insurance. “To insiders, especially those involved in the behind-the-scenes decisions of who will be the stars and what movies will be made, insurance connotes a sine qua non reality of the entertainment universe. After all, once the media dressing is stripped away, what is the New Hollywood about other than minimizing risk?”

Time magazine publishes a list of its critics’ all-time top favorite 100 movies “ranging from Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” (1931) to Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” (1993) and 2003 computer-animated hit “Finding Nemo.” But critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss snubbed several classics such as 1939’s “Gone with the Wind”.

“Two years ago, the Rev. Robert B. Lawton, the new Jesuit president of Loyola Marymount University, began an ambitious, and costly, effort to turn the small Roman Catholic school, located in a staid, middle-class neighborhood northwest of Los Angeles International Airport, into a haven for aspiring filmmakers. ‘I looked at the landscape, and I thought there should be one values-based institution in the world that’s strong in teaching how to make images that shape and reflect us’.”

“As digital technology reduces the cost and difficulty of making a movie, and memories of the dot-com bust fade, entrepreneurs, some less quixotic than others, are again looking at ways to bring the economic power and global reach of the Web to bear on the always difficult matter of film finance.”

Star Wars has scored record box office in its opening weekend. “Revenge of the Sith rang in a whopping $50 million on its opening Thursday, a single-day record boosted by eagerly anticipated midnight showings, and its total receipts since then beat the four-day $134.3 million opening of 2003’s “The Matrix Reloaded.” The George Lucas film has also grossed $144.7 million overseas for a total of $303 million worldwide.”

Workers at the BBC are on a 24-hour strike. “The strike is already causing disruption to overnight TV, radio and online news services. BBC employees are protesting at plans to cut 3,780 jobs and privatise parts of the corporation, which were announced in recent months. Unions say the cuts are the most damaging in BBC history. The corporation says they are needed so the BBC can invest more in programmes.”

Fox’s terrorist drama 24 has been hailed by critics as a well-written, well-acted, edge-of-your-seat drama since it debuted three seasons back. But of late, the program, which focuses on a counter-terrorist agent who constantly finds himself with 24 hours to save America single-handedly, has introduced a disturbing plot twist: torture. “At least a half-dozen characters have undergone interrogation under conditions that meet conventional definitions of torture. The methods portrayed have varied, and include chemical injection, electric shock and old-fashioned bone-breaking.” The shocking nature of the torture would alone be enough to cause concern, but there is a wider problem: 24 frequently seems to justify such tactics as the necessary breaking of eggs to fry the terrorist omelette.

A Belgian drama has won the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “L’Enfant is a gritty urban tale of a young couple living on the breadline in France, directed by brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne… It was the second Palme d’Or for the Dardenne brothers, having previously been awarded the prize in 1999 for controversial drama Rosetta. US director Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray as an aging Don Juan searching for a son he did not know he had, won the Grand Prix award – the runner-up for best film.”

Cannes is famous for giving novice directors a chance to compete alongside the legends of the film world, and the rookies are always grateful for the shot. But could there be a more nervewracking position to find oneself in?