Category: media

An ambitious plan to build a Scottish Hollywood has been hit by opposition. “A Glasgow businessman has submitted a scheme for a £250m national film studio in rural Perthshire that would attract big-budget films and big-name actors. But the 300 residents of Aberuthven are far from star-struck. They fear the studio with its plans for a timeshare and new housing will quadruple the size of the community and ruin their tranquil way of life.”

“It has long been an article of faith among movie lovers of all tastes that the present — any present — is but a pale shadow of the past.” But critic A.O. Scott writes that there is mounting “evidence that we are living in an extraordinary period, one we will eventually look back upon as a golden age of screen acting.”

The reactions of CBS, Michael Powell and the FCC, protesting parents’ groups, MTV and just about everyone else complaining about Janet Jackson in the Superbowl halftime show are so hypocritical they’re laughable, writes Frank Rich. “You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda — the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album’s release — and so she did.”

At a time when most music and movie industry producers are introducing some kind of copy protection in their products, some observers predict that locking up content won’t last. Instead, at some point producers will “realize that they’ll make more money out of a flat fee model than by trying to force the world – particularly developing countries – to buy expensive content under lock and key.”

The Federal Communications Commission is considering regulatory changes that will change the way most people use telephones and the internet. The internet could be accessed over electrical lines, while phone service could be provided over the internet. One commissioner says that America “stands at the threshold of a profound transformation of the telecommunications marketplace.”

The British tax department “has shut a loophole which offered tax relief to film investors, fearing it was being abused.” As a result, say some critics, the healthy British film industry may be devasted as investment dries up.

“Few in the industry defend the tax-avoidance schemes as a means of raising film funding. Indeed, many believe that the cash the schemes has attracted into the industry has led to a flood of substandard films, produced for tax-avoidance rather than artistic reasons, which have little hope of securing a cinema or television showing. What the industry objects to is the lack of warning about the move. This has left filmmakers about to go into production with no time to raise alternative funding.”

US Congressional lawmakers, angry about the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident, are roaring about getting tough on TV. “In separate hearings, members of the House of Representatives and Senate told the Federal Communications Commission and the president of Viacom Inc. that fines could just be the beginning of a new crackdown on profanity and indecency on the nation’s airwaves. Most immediately, they appear headed toward passing legislation that would increase tenfold the fine on television and radio broadcasters that violate the FCC decency rules, to a maximum of $275,000 per violation.”

Sensing a good political issue, some in Congress are jockeying to further regulate what can be shown on television. “Senate Commerce Committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., led the charge, saying he is so offended by what he sees that he backs regulating cable and satellite TV programming.” Critics say “the FCC commissioners have used their free-floating indecency standard to censor counter-cultural ideas, sexual discussions and language that reflects a sensibility different from their own. Yet the FCC’s censorship power would immediately be recognized as unconstitutional if the medium weren’t broadcasting.”

There’s been an amazing amount of posturing and speechifying over Janet Jackson’s breast. “But even as the TV networks race to delete images of nudity and sex from such prime-time dramas as ER and Without a Trace in an effort to show that they can police themselves, media historians and analysts say real, lasting change is unlikely. As dramatic as the pictures and soundbites coming out of Washington today might be, it will be mostly political posturing, the experts say, merely the latest movement in a dance between Hollywood and Washington that started with the Communications Act of 1934.”