Category: media

Bollywood’s effects teams are a busy lot. “They blow up buildings and cars, create rain, storms, smog, smoke, fire, confetti and rig up explosions and organise stunts. But today the 500 or so movie effects artists are a despondent lot. With Bollywood cinema becoming slicker, special effects shops have sprung up all over Bombay, taking away a lot of their business.

“Although high-definition television promises to bring sporting events into the nation’s living rooms in unequaled clarity, it’s also delivering something else to the television business: worry lines. With HDTV — which provides images five times sharper than those on a regular TV set — makeup cannot be caked on to hide acne scars because the heavy layers are plainly evident. Too much powder looks obvious.”

The Passion of the Christ has taken in more than $265 million – an obvious success at the box office. So Hollywood, predictably, is wondering the big money question: has the movie industry been “neglecting large segments of the American audience eager for more openly religious fare?”

“How much fictionalization should be tolerated before the designation ‘based on a true story’ becomes both a liability and a lie? The harm or benefit to society is debatable, but in examining these specimens of reality-based myth, a barometer of America emerges: Namely, they reveal the political climate in which we live and the sort of comforting untruths we crave at the movie theater.”

The media “indecency” debate in the US is a classic parent/child conflict. “For our purposes, the role of the parents in this indecency script is played by the Federal Communications Commission. The kids are radio and TV stations. And for the past 15-20 years, the FCC has largely trusted them to keep the house of broadcasting orderly. The outcome, critics say, is a disaster, with food on the ceiling, busted china and God knows what going on in the basement.”

Major movie studios are worried about piracy. But how about smaller, indie films? Since indie films don’t open with “event” releases, there’s no rush for pirates to copy movies and sell them. Still, a popular indie movie can find itself being undercut at the box office by bootleg copies.

Kerry Conran has spent 10 years working on making a movie on his computer. “Conran has not constructed a single set or miniature. Rather, they are computer images, built and animated in a virtual 3-D environment, or stitched together from photographs, which are then draped around the flesh-and-blood actors, who have been shot separately on an empty set in front of a blank ”blue-screen” background, along with those few minimal props with which they actually interact (a ray gun, a robot blueprint, a bottle of milk of magnesia). The film, in other words, is one long special effect with Jude-Law-size holes in it.”

Last year America’s FCC decided that DVD players would have to incorporate copy-limiting technology. Now a coalition of consumer advocacy groups is suing over the new law. “What is at stake is what kind of rights we have when most media is digital. We want to make sure that rights aren’t taken away because the material is in a different format. We want this technology to be the best it can be, not the second- or third-best.”

The retirement of a longtime senior exec at Canada’s CBC signals major rethinking of the public broadcaster’s programming. “The news of Harold Redekopp’s departure, expected later this year, has given rise to a groundswell of talk that a major shakeup is in the works at the public broadcaster – one that will affect a number of key executive positions as well as many facets of its programming, from arts and entertainment to news and current affairs.”

“A Senate panel has paved the way for a broad crackdown on offensive radio and television programming, including extending stiff fines to artists, limiting violence and temporarily preventing broadcasters from owning more stations until potential links between media consolidation and indecency on the airwaves can be studied.”