Category: media

With the success of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, critics are wondering if documentaries are going to be the next big thing in movies. “Are documentaries going to be taken more seriously? The short answer is yes. But Michael Moore is still a special case. He’s become a star, almost like any other star. That said, I do think audiences are getting used to going to documentaries in a way they haven’t before.”

The fall of Communism was a near-death sentence for the Russian film industry, as the federal funding that had always been a cornerstone of the USSR dried up in the capitalist world of post-Soviet reality. “By 1997, a miserable 12 home-grown films were released per year in Russia. By last year, however, that had shot up to 75, state sponsorship has risen by 14 per cent in 2004 to $70 million, and an average of 30 per cent of any film’s budget is now provided by the government. Add to this the fact that most urban Russians under 35 cite filmgoing as their favourite pastime, and the predicted rise this year in the number of screens in Russia from 550 to 700, and it seems that Stollywood has arrived.”

The music industry appears to have finally embraced downloading as the wave of the future, and many are asking what took so damn long. But John Naughton says that we shouldn’t be surprised by the industry’s slow embrace of the obvious: “The fact that the music moguls resisted music downloading for so long is par for the course. They opposed audio, cassette and video taping and, later, DVD. Yet each turned out to be extraordinarily profitable. Movie studios now earn far more from videos and DVDs than they do from cinema audiences, but they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the DVD world.”

When Jack Valenti steps down as president of the Motion Picture Association of America later this summer, he will hand the reins to former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, a darkhorse candidate chosen for his Washington influence rather than his connection to Hollywood. But don’t expect the MPAA’s party line to change: according to Glickman, his top three priorities will be “piracy, piracy, piracy.”

Intel has a vision: “Consumers will start to use their PCs at home to download, store and manage films, songs and games, in order to transmit all this fun stuff wirelessly to TV screens and stereo speakers throughout the house. The kids could then watch “Shrek 2” in the basement, while mum listens to Brahms in the kitchen and dad browses the holiday pictures on the main TV screen in the living room.”

The Motion Picture Association of America has a new chief. “To succeed Jack Valenti, 82, once an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Motion Picture Association of America has chosen Dan Glickman, a former agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton and a Democratic congressman from Kansas, as its new chairman.”

Canadian internet providers aren’t liable for royalties for music downloaded by their customers, rules the Supreme Court. “In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the court ruled that although ISPs provide the hardware and technology, they aren’t responsible for what people download. The court ruled that companies providing wide access to the web are “intermediaries” who are not bound by federal copyright legislation.”

The FCC is proposing to fine CBS the maximum allowable amount – $550,000 – for the now-infamous on-air baring of Janet Jackson’s right breast during the Super Bowl halftime show. The fines would officially be levied against 20 CBS “O&O’s” – affiliate stations which are owned and operated by the New York-based network. The FCC, which has been accused in recent months of being on a witchhunt, had vowed to review the incident, which prompted the recent government crackdown on supposedly indecent material airing on American TV and radio.

When the British government closed a tax loophole covering the private funding of major films, the UK film industry went ballistic, claiming that the change would literally kill off the nation’s movie business. A few months on, however, the industry is admitting that new sources of funding have been found, and nothing has really changed. In fact, experts expect “the numbers of films and jobs in the industry in 2004 to end up roughly the same as 2003.”

Sony plans to take on Apple directly in the coming months, launching a new digital version of its famous Walkman to compete with Apple’s iPod. The company claims that its player will cost significantly less than the iPod, and will store as many as 3,000 more songs. The player, which will play only songs encoded in Sony’s own format, debuts this month in Japan, and hits U.S. stores in August.