Category: media

“A French children’s author is suing Disney, saying the international box-office hit Finding Nemo may have been lifted from his own work.”

Shaghai is the cultural capital of the new China. But still, censorship means that watching some of the country’s most interesting new movies requires going to underground screenings. “Since 1999 China has had about 100 independent movies. They are insightful, powerful and tell the real China.” But they happen outside the approval of official censors. Wider acceptance may be coming though. “People beyond the elite were beginning to respond to these movies, which speak of their own lives.”

Bollywood is the largest producer of movies in the world. Instead of being held in India, the annual Bollywood film awards – the equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars – are staged in other cities around the world. They’ve been held in London, South Africa, and Malaysia, and this year, Canada wanted to host them. “Organizers saw B.C. as a natural fit because of the province’s large Indo-Canadian population as well as a thriving film sector that many in Bollywood would have been interested in checking out for co-production possibilities as well as options for making movies here.” But alass it’s not to happen.

The back-scenes dealing between Michael Jackson and CBs that resulted in a 60 Minutes interview and the airing of an MJ music special this week further blurs the lines between TV “news” and entertainment. “Critics regularly warn about the narrowing line between news and entertainment. Now that line is downright disappearing. The news and entertainment branches of the network are mere offshoots of much larger corporate enterprises, in this case, Viacom. News and entertainment are equally engaged in the pursuit of profits. The news division, once a special enclave with a higher calling, is now a cog in the business machine. The “divisions” are less divided than they are team players.”

There are hundreds of movie critic associations and awards. And this is the time of year when they all weigh in with pronouncements about which movies matter. So how do you figure out which awards matter?

Bad language is everywhere in the media. I there anything that shocks us anymore? And yet, we make gestures at protesting. “We obsess over the encroachment of vulgar words into public spaces on pain of a stark inconsistency, one that will appear even more ridiculous to future generations than some Victorians calling trousers “nether garments” does to us. At least the Victorians’ vocabulary taboos reflected mores that permeated society. Theirs was a world in which an author of a slang dictionary would have had trouble finding a publisher, people sequestered themselves under reams of fabric, illegitimate birth was a scandal, and sex was never spoken of in polite society.”

“With more American households going to broadband, faster Internet connections are changing the movie, music, telephone, computer and cable businesses. The battles brought on by these changes are likely to occupy the media and technology industries in 2004.”

Led by the latest installment of the Lord of the Rings, America’s movie theatres saw record holiday box office over the weekend. The total estimated weekend box office receipts for the top dozen films was $168.6 million, a record. The top 12 movies over the same weekend last year pulled in $155.9 million.

Manhattan movie theatres bump up movie ticket prices by 25 cents – to a record $10.25. Movie-goers give the move a thumbs-down: “There are ads, and they’re in your face and obnoxious. There are previews, and they’re just as bad. It doesn’t seem right. They show you ads, so why are they raising the prices?”

Increasingly, independent films are becoming a major force in the movie industry. Why? “Independent and independent-minded films may earn less at the box office, but it’s easier for them to turn a profit, because they’re vastly cheaper to make. Even a little gem such as “Pieces of April,’ which has grossed about $1.7 million, is a moneymaker – because it cost only $300,000.”