Category: media

No matter where you went during the Toronto International Film Festival, you couldn’t avoid Phil the Alien. The director, the stars, and just about anyone else associated with the film were absolutely everywhere at TIFF, and the exposure was no accident. “Within a week, this well-orchestrated buzz would lead to a Canadian distribution deal for Phil the Alien with Lions Gate Films.”

HBO trumped the broadcast networks yet again at this year’s Emmy Awards, taking home a record 11 awards for its miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, as well as the award for best drama, which went to The Sopranos. Fox’s critically acclaimed but low-rated Arrested Development won for best comedy, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took home best variety honors for the second year in a row.

Following the Napster name from pirate scourge to persecuted litigant to legit music company over the last few years has been dizzying. “Now in its latest reincarnation, [Napster’s current parent] Roxio has shed its CD-burning software business and plans to concentrate solely on selling and delivering music over the web. It will adopt Napster as its corporate name, trading under a new ticker symbol. The pure-play move will mark Napster’s birth as the name of a public company, but more importantly, arm the company with resources to help survive the rough-and-tumble as other deep-pocketed, powerful rivals enter the crowded online music space.”

Getting on the list of films to be screened at a major festival is a big step for an indie filmmaker, but it’s only half the battle. Distributors prowl the fests looking for indies to turn into the Next Big Thing, but for most fledgling directors, there’s no pot of gold waiting at the end of all the schmoozing and politicking.

There were some fairly unwatchable films shown at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and naturally, critics will be sure to harp on their selection for what is supposed to be a showcase of great art. But the point of such festivals to show us a reflection of our world in artistic fashion, and human error is sometimes a part of that reality. “We must… remember that programmers aren’t infallible and that occasionally they make mistakes. But an even worse mistake would be to return to the kind of blanket censorship that dogged the festival in its early years, when Ontario’s cinema nannies regulated every thrust and slash.”

“By Tuesday morning Hollywood screenwriters, working without a contract for the last half year, will have decided whether they are ripe for revolution. Under the eye of the Labor Department, the 8,000-member Writers Guild of America, West, is to conclude on Monday night a mostly mail-in election to choose a president and 8 of 16 board members. The presidential contest is between a ferocious reformer… who not only wants to fire the group’s paid executives but is also assisting a legal assault on the guild’s high-stakes system for settling film and television credits disputes – and the incumbent… who believes the members need institutional peace.”

United Artists has always been a bit of an odd duck in the world of big-money Hollywood studios: founded and run for decades by actors, unconcerned with churning out blockbusters, and focused first and foremost on creating great works. Now, with UA’s parent company, MGM, about to be absorbed by Sony Pictures, the little studio that could is in danger of fading away, or at least having its mission twisted beyond recognition.

Increasingly, the TV industry’s most successful programs are not the creative result of a traditional production team (writers, producers, directors, actors) working together to beat the odds and make a hit show. Rather, the prime time landscape is now dominated by “showrunners… [who] do just about everything on a dramatic series, from writing scripts and casting actors to negotiating with the networks over salaries and budgets.” It may seem like a cosmetic change, but the fact is that showrunners are changing the landscape of scripted television.

Should the BBC sell its archived programs to commercial broadcasters? It’s not so much for the money – but Making archives available for sale would increase the distribution of classic radio.

Most of the big entertainment awards shows – the Oscars, the Golden Globes – are scheduled at the beginning of the year. And then there are the Emmys, which languish all by themselves in the fall. “Could an earlier Emmy ceremony juice viewership, which last year measured just under 18 million? That’s compared to nearly 27 million viewers for this year’s Golden Globes and 43 million-plus for the Oscars.”