Category: media

Plastic surgery is a way of life in Hollywood. “Our screens are crowded with freakishly plumped lips and breasts so round they look drawn by protractors. Easiest to spot are the plastic-surgery casualties: the character actor with misaligned ears, the actress who looks permanently stuck in a wind tunnel. These are surgery’s cautionary tales, the waning careers and lost souls who, in attempting to hang onto fame, become grotesques. The bigger the star the better the surgery. But even when you look at the best face money can buy, something seems wrong with the picture.”

Tiny Minnestoa public radio jazz station KBEM is struggling. Oddly, the station’s closest rival KJZI, owned by media giant Clear Channel, has come to the station’s aid, giving it money and offering to help promote it. “In addition to the cash infusion, Clear Channel will broadcast messages on several of its Twin Cities stations asking listeners to support KBEM. It also plans to help the station with its winter jazz festival and future pledge drives.”

A n increasing number of Western actors are going to Bollywood. “Bollywood has truly gone global. Directors are now attempting to woo non-Asian audience to increase their share in the overseas film market.”

The Louvre has decided to allow producers to shoot scened for The Da Vinci Code in its galleries. Louvre director Henri Loyrette told France’s Inter Radio: “We have agreed in principle. There is really a very strong desire to see the film adaptation of this book, which is world famous, shot at the Louvre.”

Hollywood’s two major actors unions have made a deal on new contracts. “Under the agreement, which still needs final approval, actors will get a nine per cent minimum pay raise over three years, increased money for the unions’ health and pension plans and greater protections for stunt actors and extras. However, actors did not get a larger share of DVD residuals, which unions representing writers and directors had tried unsuccessfully for in their recent contract negotiations.”

“Independent film may be dead, as so many of its partisans continually proclaim, but if it is, it has been reincarnated in the shape of another much-mourned, perpetually misunderstood movie martyr, the studio system.”

For now, the movie industry is suing file-sharing services. But “once several high-profile legal cases against file-sharers are resolved this year, firms will be very keen to try and make money from P2P technology.”

“Thanks to broadband technology, the internet has created thousands of new radio stations that, generated simply by the home PCs of amateur DJs, cater to every music taste, no matter how obscure. These days, anyone can be a radio star. You don’t have to be a technical whiz to join this radio revolution – all you need is a PC and a subscription to a radio website, such as Shoutcast or Live365.”

“America’s 500-or-so casting directors and associates—the unsung people-brokers who select actors for a film’s director or producer—are threatening to strike if the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) refuses to grant them union recognition and health and pension benefits.”

Why is it so fashionable to dump on Sundance (yes, it’s that time of year again)? “Sundance has triumphed because it changes its public face at a moment’s notice—from pointy-headed and grave when indie film needs rejuvenation, to glamorous and cheerleading when indie film needs marketing brio. To wail about Sundance renouncing its founding mission is to assume the festival had a profound mission to begin with.”