Category: media

It’s Golden Globes time again, which means it’s once again time for entertainment writers the world over the bemoan the outsized influence wielded in Hollywood by the motley collection of hacks, suck-ups, and gladhanders who make up the Globes-sponsoring Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But like it or not, the Globes have managed to acheive first-team status in the movie industry, even if they are the awards show equivalent of Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith – famous just for being famous.

Handicapping Hollywood’s various awards shows used to be a simple matter of watching a lot of movies, and assessing which was the best. These days, you need a calculator, an official odds cheatsheet, and a serious knowledge of the industry’s increasingly absurd social order to even begin to make a prediction. “But don’t we risk losing some of the fun and surprise of awards night, by trying so hard to figure out something that is essentially unfathomable? Didn’t most critics get into arts writing because they didn’t want to grow up and become accountants?”

It’s not an easy time to be Muslim in America, and lately, Islamic advocates have been complaining mightily about Fox Television’s new season of the terrorism drama 24, which depicts an ordinary Muslim family as a covert terrorist “sleeper cell.” Fox isn’t apologizing for the plotline, but has agreed to air several public service announcements produced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which depict Muslims in a positive light.

“BBC governors were so concerned at the record number of complaints about Jerry Springer – the Opera that they sought a personal assurance from director general Mark Thompson that it did not breach blasphemy and obscenity regulations.”

Bob and Harvey Weinstein are leaving Disney. But the split is a complicated one, involving scores of projects and relationships that muct be untangled. “Disney executives and representatives of Miramax, which is owned by the Burbank-based company, are expected to discuss later this week or next which creative projects the Weinsteins, who have been in testy negotiations over their contracts, will be allowed to take with them as they exit Disney. ‘This may be a divorce, but it’s a divorce with children’.”

The director of Blockbuster Video in the UK says it’s time to get serious about a movie strategy for the internet. Films should be released simultaneously in all countires, he says. He also said that “film studios should follow the lead of the music industry and look at ways of releasing films on the internet where they can be downloaded legitimately. He called for downloads, DVDs and VHS to be made available at the same time films are released in the cinema.”

Reagan was good for independent filmmakers. “As we enter Bush’s second term, the country’s extreme rightward turn could ignite the type of movie renaissance not seen since eight years of nuclear proliferation, HIV discrimination, and materialist greed helped produce the American independent film movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s. If the careers of Todd Haynes, Spike Lee, and Steven Soderbergh were all launched during the Reagan-Bush regime, imagine what’s possible over the next four years.”

The tax credit game continues. Recently Ontario boosted its tax credit program for film production from 11 percent to 18 percent, trying to lure back business lost to the US. Then Quebec raised the stakes to 20 percent for foreign productions. Now British Columbia’s film industry is pressuring the provincial government for similar action. “I was two minutes into the phone call before they said, ‘Well, is it possible to shoot the film in Ontario instead of B.C. so that we get the extra percentages?’ “

The tens of thousands of complaints to the BBC over the airing of Jerry Springer, The Opera, has surprised programmers. “We were certainly struck by the scale of the protest, and the e-mails as well as letters and phone calls, but obviously viewers and listeners have an absolute right to make their voices heard. The BBC surprised by the scale of the campaign.”

Why are so many directors’ favorite projects failures as movies? “The failure of so many pet projects is more than fluky coincidence. Such films have their own set of problems. Over the years, endless script revisions can drain the life and energy from a movie, which then staggers into the world as if emerging from decades in a dark attic, as withered and creaky as Miss Havisham. And the filmmaker’s passion is often so blinding that he forgets to explain to the rest of us why Alexander was so great or Bobby Darin was such an idol in the Spacey household.”