Category: media

“Rarely has one article caused such a commotion on both coasts as journalist Bernie Weinraub’s goodbye to the Hollywood beat in The New York Times on Sunday. It was as if narrator Nick Carraway were given space in The Paper of Record to write honestly about the swell set, only this time he surprises us by revealing that he longed for the green light of status and money as much as Jay Gatsby did.”

“It may blow your mind to think that over four million people are now paying $10 or $13 a month just to listen to the radio. Truth is, though, that what they’re getting isn’t very much like radio at all. They’re getting 65 music channels, free of commercials and endless teenybopper-top-10 repetition, and 40 to 50 talk channels. Because they don’t have to appeal to a mainstream audience to attract advertisers, the expert-fanatic channel hosts can “narrowcast” tightly targeted musical styles (like pop, acoustic, hip-hop, country, movie soundtracks, classical) and nichey talk topics (like comedy, sports, advice, old-time radio dramas, audio books, religion and children).”

“The inability of moviegoers beyond both coasts to see this year’s Oscar-nominated films has been a thorny issue for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sponsor of the Academy Awards, and never more so than this year. Film companies have increasingly chosen to let their Oscar prospects trickle into the marketplace, letting the awards hoopla build before they risk advertising dollars on a wider market. ‘It’s a money-driven situation. ‘We’re able to distribute the pictures where we can get box office’.”

New American education secretary defends her concerns about the cartoon Postcards from Buster on PBS because it shows gays in the background. “When people turn on the Public Broadcasting System, they expect to get something that is very straight down the line that is educationally oriented. And I think that particular topic, of sexuality and lifestyles, are things that need to be introduced by parents and families in their own way and in their own time.”

Sundance certainly still has the right to call itself an independent film festival, and it can’t be denied that the Park City hoedown remains a mecca for up-and-coming filmmakers. But this year, the festival also dug deep to reach new heights of comparatively safe, traditional Hollywood excess. “Welcome to Sundance, where a studio’s ode to a porno auteur’s independent vision earns thunderous applause at a world premiere stuffed with industry execs and billed in the festival program as an example of ‘bravery and courage.’ (Not just bravery, mind you, but bravery and courage.)”

iPods are wildly popular in the little town of Redmond, Washington. So what, you say? They’re popular everywhere, you say? Yeah, well, Redmond just happens to be home to the Microsoft Corporation, and those people wandering the streets with the telltale Apple-produced white earphones trailing from their ears are all Microsoft employees. And don’t think that seeing their closest competitors product dangling from the heads of their own people doesn’t have Microsoft’s notoriously competitive management all in a tizzy.

One of Washington, D.C.’s public radio stations is considering what has by now become a familiar format switch – dropping nearly all its classical music programming in favor of news and talk shows. WETA has been plagued by low ratings in recent years, and executives at the station fear that a classical format simply isn’t viable in an era when public broadcasters are forced to play much the same numbers game as commercial stations. However, there is a twist to WETA’s proposed change – the District already has an all-news public radio station, and the new format at WETA would likely duplicate a great deal of the programming that area listeners can already hear on WAMU.

“In the eyes of many movie idealists, Sundance is a paranoid fantasy come true, an art mecca devoured by a commercial mecca. Once the preserve of purists who decried Tinseltown philistines and revered long, slow movies about long, cold pioneer winters, now it’s a place where $16 million deals are struck hot and fast while Paris Hilton dirty-dances with Pamela Anderson prior to picking up free underwear at Sundance’s innumerable star-fucking freebie emporiums. It’s the best way to expose brand names to the widest possible audience, whether the product is a gritty indie flick or a pricey brassiere.”

So Sundance is over for another year. Several trends are obvious, judging by this year’s offerings. And the first? Indie film is dead. Long live indie film.

Why does it often take so long for Oscar-nominated movies to play in countries outside the US? “The delay between US release and the rest of the world is often to the frustration of movie buffs keen to see the latest films before Oscar nominations are revealed. But it is the tactics adopted during the fierce competition of film festival season that determine when and where a movie will make its mark. The studios vying for cinema’s most prestigious prize know that when it comes to taking home the goods, timing is everything.”