Category: media

The American Film Renaissance, which bills itself as the world’s first and only conservative-leaning film festival, wrapped up recently in Dallas, and Britain’s left-leaning newspaper of record couldn’t resist sending a correspondent. What he found was a group of extremely earnest Americans longing for a few movies that represent their worldview. That worldview apparently includes a fictional Don Rumsfeld predicting the 9/11 attacks in advance, Ann Coulter as a plain-speaking truth-teller, and former government officials explaining “how abortion is robbing America’s retired people of their welfare safety net.”

A new film focusing on the life of Adolf Hitler is roiling the European continent, and causing the German people to question whether it is ever acceptable to humanize such a monstrous figure. But humanizing the Führer is exactly what this movie is about, “a Hitler of failed dreams amid a collapsing empire, a man who at turns is delusional, hardhearted, vicious, but also tender, caring, despairing… Downfall cuts an accurate but narrow-gauge path through the historic moment, transiting between the claustrophobic choke of Hitler’s underground bunker and the raging slaughter in the streets of Berlin, avoiding the suffering of all but the Germans.”

The Boston Film Festival wrapped up this past Sunday, and unless you live in New England, you probably missed it. So what makes festivals in Toronto and New York such a big deal, while other cities struggle for recognition? “What the BFF lacks is a distinct programming sensibility, which is a quality that’s impossible to define yet unmistakable when you’ve got it. A well-curated film festival creates excitement and the feeling you’re getting early access to the movies that matter… Without such a sensibility, you have a group of movies with no collective momentum, and that, year in and year out, is what the Boston Film Festival offers.”

CBS has been fined a record $550,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for its 2-second airing of pop singer Janet Jackson’s right breast during the Super Bowl halftime show last January. The incident touched off months of shrill debate over broadcasting decency standards, and led directly to an FCC crackdown and an increase in the maximum allowable fines for such offenses.

“French director Claude Lelouch faces a hefty bill after offering free screenings of his latest film when it was panned by newspaper critics. About 40,000 people across France took up the free tickets to see ‘Les Parisiens’ – at a cost of £104,000 ($186,000) to Mr Lelouch.”

“Pop Vultures,” a fledgling talk show co-conceived by none other than Garrison Keillor, attempts to shake up National Public Radio’s stodgy-geek ambience with an ultra-conversational approach to pop music.

A new series of economic incentives intended to give the domestic film industry a boost have been introduced in the UK. Producers will be eligible for direct subsidies of up to £4 million per picture, and “[p]roducers of films with budgets up to £20m will also receive a 50% tax waiver on their production costs, on condition that the film makes a profit.” The plan also protects producers against the possibility of money-losing films, offering 20% of production costs in the event that a film fails to make a profit.

Recent court rulings have threatened to severely limit the appropriation of small passages of music known as “sampling.” But even as the law cracks down on behalf of the authors of three-note musical phrases, the art of the remix may be about to move on to the world of video. The director of a successful documentary is making waves with the announcement that he will make the video of his work available online for anyone to sample, free of charge. “By all accounts, it’s one of the first times a major motion picture has been offered for public manipulation.”

A new internet streaming service offered by Microsoft has traditional radio stations fuming, and many are accusing the software behemoth of copyright hypocrisy. The service consists of multiple live CD-quality streams of commercial-free music which duplicate exactly the publicly available playlists of nearly 1000 North American radio stations. Listeners can even select their favorite station by location and call letters, and hear the same music mix that traditional radio listeners hear, minus the commercials. Microsoft insists that it is doing nothing wrong, and legally, it probably isn’t.

It’s a measure of the populist nature of the Toronto International Film Festival that its top award is known as the People’s Choice. This year, as TIFF closed up shop for another season, the prize went to a riveting British/South African/Italian co-production called Hotel Rwanda. It was a good year for South African film in general at the fest, and also a strong year for documentaries. And just in case anyone had forgotten what country he was in, TIFF organizers released their official list of the top Canadian films of all time.