Category: media

Pessimism? At Sundance? Well, maybe so, but you won’t hear any booing from Roger Ebert’s seat. “I have just spent an hour with the 2003 program for the Sundance Film Festival, and I am churning with eagerness to get at these films. On the basis of track records, this could be the strongest Sundance in some time — and remember, last year’s festival kicked off an extraordinary year for indie films.”

The Canadian film industry has come in for plenty of criticism for its habit of luring Hollywood productions northward with lower production costs and a wide variety of natural locations in which to shoot, and the number of US productions made in Canada has dropped as a result. But after a couple of down years, the nation’s biggest film production center, Vancouver, appears to be making a comeback.

Cable television rates are skyrocketing around the US, as service providers continue to be consolidated into a few, gigantic companies. What used to be an industry of diverse local monopolies is becoming an uncontrollable corporate behemoth with the authority to raise rates, yank channels, and gouge consumers at will, says Monica Collins. “The average household cable bill has climbed to $70 a month for television that used to be free.” And while countless lawmakers have called for Congressional hearings on the way the cable industry conducts itself, that public airing of gripes never seems to happen.

PBS’s controversial chief executive appears to be close to inking a deal extending her contract with the public broadcaster for another three years. Pat Mitchell, who came to PBS from CNN in 1999, has presided over a stormy era for the network, in which it saw much of its market share usurped by specialty cable channels. Mitchell has been criticized for running PBS like a commercial network, but has also drawn praise for her realistic approach to the job, and her willingness to expand the network’s overall mission.

The Sundance Film Festival has its critics, of course. Indy producers complain that the Utah-based festival has become too enamored of big-budget Hollywood types in recent years, and big-budget Hollywood types grouse that they can’t get a film shown there unless it stars Parker Posey. But Kenneth Turan thinks that Robert Redford’s festival has found its niche, and it has little to do with budget size: Sundance is the place for films which just don’t seem to fit anywhere else, and its organizers have never abandoned their effort to keep the event fresh and exciting.

You may not have heard, but the recording industry has some money for you. Specifically, if you purchased a CD, tape, or vinyl album between 1995 and 2000, you’re entitled to part of a massive cash settlement paid by various record labels as a penalty for their collusion and price-fixing crimes during the 1990s. Now, don’t get excited: you can’t get more than $20, and if too many people file claims, you won’t get anything at all (in which case, all the money would go to music education programs,) but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

A slew of high-budget US films has propelled 2002 UK movie ticket sales to a 10% increase over 2001, despite earlier fears that the World Cup would cut into cinema attendance during the crucial summer blockbuster period. The increase came even as the rest of Europe experiences a decline in sales and interest, and coincided with what many are calling a ‘renaissance’ of British film.

A number of consumer organizations and digital rights groups are complaining that yesterday’s landmark agreement between the recording industry and the computer industry concerning copyright protection and digital piracy doesn’t go nearly far enough in protecting the rights of consumers to do what they wish with content they have legally purchased. The activists hope that Congress will press forward with the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act, proposed last year, but the new agreement was struck with the understanding that Congress would agree to keep government out of the issue.

Maori elders have told the makers of a £70 million film starring Tom Cruise that they cannot film a New Zealand volcano crucial to the script because it is sacred. Spokesmen for several of the region’s Maori tribes have complained that ‘there has been no financial recognition of their interest in the mountain’.”

Following trends elsewhere, Korean movie attendance was up in 2002, and 47 percent of all tickets sold were to Korean-made movies. After 9/11 2001, “foreign films saw a rise of only 6.6 percent while Korean films saw an abrupt increase of 96.8 percent. A total of 78 films were produced domestically, and foreign sales came to approximately $15 million. The average Korean saw 2.27 films last year, the most since 1975.”