Category: media

The traditional opening press conference at the Cannes Film Festival was not the usual affair this year. The jury president’s English was sketchy enough to leave everyone wondering what he was talking about, and author Toni Morrison responded to questions about what she was doing on a film jury by declaring her judgment “infallible.” All in all, no one seemed quite sure what was going on, but there did seem to be a general agreement that “democracy is very different from film.” Whatever that means.

“Suppose you run a cable channel dedicated to showing art house films. You wake up one day and realize that the independent film industry isn’t making that many truly independent films anymore. You notice your audience is as fervent about video as it is about film. You sense viewers are no longer satisfied with your selecting the film lineup; they want to do it themselves. If you’re the Independent Film Channel, you’ve clearly got some identity issues. Over the last year, IFC has faced up to the challenge with an overhaul centered on increased original programming, along with aggressive media and educational campaigns catering to its small but avid and digitally hip audience.”

In so many ways,New York dominates the American cultural landscape, but usually, to make it big there, you’ve got to be pretty big yourself. But a new generation of filmmakers are making a name for themselves in the Big Apple by going small. “Culturally vibrant, if economically still fragile, New York has quietly been emerging as the world’s primary clearinghouse for a fast-expanding pool of very-low-budget movies. A ragtag posse of former college film series promoters, ex-gofers at major studios and chronically underfinanced filmmakers – their way paved by the low costs and relative ease of digital technology – has coalesced here into a commercial brokerage and cinematic salon devoted largely to the ‘little’ film.”

Internet giant Yahoo! acquired online download service MusicMatch last year for $160 million in what was considered something of a coup for the company, which had been battered by the rise of Google. So why has Yahoo! suddenly launched its own online music service in direct competition with MusicMatch?

With the entertainment landscape getting more and more crowded, and movie ticket sales sagging, how do you get people out to see your movies in the theatre? You get creative…

Workers at the BBC have voted to stage a strike to protest plans to cut 3,780 jobs. “Members of the Bectu and NUJ unions have voted in favour of a walk-out – probably a 12- or 24-hour stoppage between mid-May and early June. The BBC is expected to try to minimise disruption but unions said they want ‘black screens and dead air’.”

Why do movies cost so much to make? “The art of the deal has come to replace the art of movies. To understand how the new Hollywood really works, one need only read stars’ contracts…”

Public broadcasting in America gets a big funding boost from a major new initiative from the Ford Foundation. “The initiative will funnel $50 million over five years to a baker’s dozen of public television, radio and other media organizations. A major focus of the effort will be to spur the creation and distribution of public affairs programming, particularly programs dealing with international affairs. The Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio will receive the largest grants, $10 million and $7.5 million respectively.”

HBO has begun making movies for theatrical release rather than for its TV network. “Making movies for theaters would seem counterintuitive for a premium cable channel, but it’s a strategy that HBO Films is following on select titles to burnish its reputation and direct attention to projects that may otherwise be overlooked.”

Hollywood movies are increasingly thinking video games. “For studios, they represent a lucrative opportunity to introduce “catalog” products to a new generation of players and broaden a gaming universe that is already red hot. According to the NPD Group, a New York-based sales and marketing research firm, video-game software accounted for $7.3 billion in revenues in 2004, and sales rose 23% in the first quarter of this year. Games such as “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith,” released last week, are developed in conjunction with the film. And recently the DVD world began cashing in too, offering simplified versions of video games as “extras” with films such as “Hulk” and “Van Helsing.”