Category: media

The stir over Mel Gison’s The Passion of Christ has been prodigious. Christian journalist Lorna Dueck is skeptical: “I’m not sure who’s using whom more, the profit-makers in Hollywood or those with an interest in conversion, but there is unparalleled church energy over this movie, and as a reporter with an ear on the evangelical beat, I’m about to pray “deliver us from e-mail” because I can’t keep up with the buzz that’s hitting my inbox over this film.”

Comcast is making a hostile bid to take over Disney. “The takeover attempt, if successful, would create one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, along with Viacom, Time Warner and News Corp. Disney owns its film studio, ABC television, the ESPN sports network and the Disney theme parks. Comcast has 21 million cable customers and 7 million Internet broadband customers, half of them acquired when it took over AT&T Broadband 15 months ago.”

After 28 years of helping local filmmakers, the Boston Film and Video Foundation announced yesterday that it is closing its doors and dissolving the nonprofit organization. The organization had been struggling with funding for some time.

A senior BBC official says that traditional ratings measures are inadequate, and different means should be found to determine the success of shows. “This new measure should have the ambition to get closer to our audiences, understanding what really has impact for them – what they think, feel and care about. I know it’s a huge task, but Ofcom should design something to meaningfully challenge the tyranny of overnights.”

A new report details a five year decline in jobs in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. The report predicts 2,500 more jobs will disappear in 2004. “A loss of 2,500 jobs would leave the region’s motion picture and sound employment at 111,100. While that could further fall to 109,600 in 2005, employment for independent artists, writer and performers continues to increase. It should rise 11% to 12,200 in 2004 and to 13,600 the following year, the report said.”

So Viacom is trying to unload Blockbuster Video after failing to find a buyer. “It’s an ignominious unilateral divorce for a company that served Viacom so well—and has become one of America’s most-recognized brand names. But things have quickly soured for Blockbuster. With remarkable speed, renting videotapes has become passé.”

The Lord of the Rings movie will soon become the highest box-office grossing movie of all time. “Peter Jackson’s epic has now made $942.7m (£517.9m) worldwide, and is expected to pass the $1bn mark after it is released in Japan on 14 February. Only Titanic from 1997 and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, released in 2001, have taken more money.”

Blockbuster Video is being sold by Viacom, and at a greatly reduced price. “Blockbuster’s business has been under pressure from cheap sales of DVDs through major retailers as well as emerging video technologies like video on demand and personal video recorders.”

Disney has signed a deal with Microsoft to incorporate the software maker’s digital protections into its movies. “The deal with Microsoft will wrap the software giant’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) system around the media being made available to stop it being illegally copied. The system being developed should allow buyers of the Disney films a limited ability to move the movies between PCs and media players.”

Moscow has begun cracking down on illegal copies of movies and music. Last summer, illegal CD’s and DVD’s were freely available on the streets of the Russian capital. “In the early 1990s, cinemas showed the latest movies, but not one rouble went to pay the Hollywood studios that made them. Often pirate movies were broadcast on state television. Even now, pirate disks are openly on sale in almost every corner of Russia.”