Category: media

The Motion Picture Association of America is offering rewards to informats on DVD piracy in Asia. The “MPA estimates that pirated DVDs cost Hollywood $3 billion in lost revenue in 2002, and $646 million in Asia.” The MPA declines to say how much informants will be offered, that “rewards would be significant and dependent on the quality of information provided. ‘If we need more money we’ll get it. Money isn’t the issue’.”

Blockbuster Video has a policy of not carrying any movie rated NC-17, or any unrated film which violates the chain’s vaguely defined decency standards. But when an edited copy of the critically lauded film Y Tu Mamá También appeared on Blockbuster shelves recently, missing a key scene in which two gay men share a passionate kiss, critics of the Blockbuster policy, and of the MPAA’s ratings standards, were furious. “Regardless of who made the decision and why, the kiss that dare not show itself reflects another Hollywood trend: Lesbian sex scenes between buxom beauties… are acceptable, even fashionable, while a smooch between male buddies is forced to hit the road.”

For some time now, theatre has bridged the gap between speaking and singing. But “as the recent reviews of ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘Chicago’ have made clear, it has become commonplace wisdom that today’s film musicals cannot work if songs arise naturally and directly out of dialogue. Critic after critic deems film too naturalistic a medium for such an inherently unreal device; characters singing on screen, they insist, must acknowledge the artifice in some way in order for audiences to accept it.”

“The upset winner as best film at the politically charged Berlin Film Festival is In This World, a faux docu-drama about refugees from Afghanistan journeying to Europe. The awarding of the Golden Bear prize to Michael Winterbottom’s film ahead of favourite The Hours and other high-profile titles Adaptation, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and 25th Hour, was seen as a pointed anti-war statement from the seven-member jury led by Canadian director Atom Egoyan. The festival was overshadowed by protests at U.S. military intentions against Iraq. The closing awards ceremony on Saturday took place against the backdrop of a massive anti-war demonstration in the German capital.”

With funding for public broadcasting under fire in Canada, you would think that the CBC would take all the help and support it could find. But a new organization agitating on behalf of the $900-million-a-year public network is being regarded with some suspicion by CBC higher-ups. Our Public Airwaves, a pro-CBC lobbying group which sprang into existence last summer, has so far done nothing to which the company could object. But OPA is a creation of the two unions representing CBC workers, and at a time when relations between management and labor have not exactly been cozy, the CBC brass are not openly embracing the group.

“Ideas are not the only thing Hollywood recycles: The thousands of prints left over after all those blockbusters have run out of steam at the nation’s multiplexes have sparked a thriving industry that helps transform old film into other products, including polyester fabric. Last year’s ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, for example, required 8,400 prints for the U.S. and Canada alone. For that three-hour movie, the total for those prints amounts to about 29,000 miles of film.”

“Frida” has been one of the most talked-about movies of the season (at least by artists). But when Julie Taymor was offered the film to direct, she hesitated. “I wasn’t interested, even though I’m a painter, because normally I don’t think you can figure out why a painter paints. How do you know? You can suppose many things, but often the artist comes out quite monstrous, full of angst, and you never get behind the inspiration.”

Supporters and critics of Canada’s public broadcaster debate the issue. According to critics, an expanded media universe renders a state-subsidized public broadcaster unnecessary: “The bad news is that the CBC is increasingly obsolete; the good news is that it is increasingly unnecessary.” But CBC supporters maintain that “broadcasters have a unique societal role to play beyond the ratings-based for-profit alternatives.”

India’s Bollywood is home to the world’s largest film industry and it has billions of fans. Recently its unique style has taken London by storm. But until now, America has failed to succumb to its charms. But that may change with some new projects. “Some see this
combination of the world’s two largest film industries as a welcome merger. But others worry about what may get lost in the translation.”

The Hours, Hollywood’s adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel about Virginia Woolf, is drawing criticism from literary historians who feel the Oscar-nominated film, starring a nearly unrecognizable Nicole Kidman, unfairly portrays Woolf as an ugly, suicidal misfit. Oh, and that nose, according to these offended experts, is just way off.