Category: media

“Chicago, a musical about lady killers in prison, received a leading eight Golden Globe nominations Thursday, including best musical or comedy and best actress for stars Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The Hours, a three-tiered story about women coping with sadness whose lives are linked to a novel by Virginia Woolf, had seven nominations including best film drama, best actress for Nicole Kidman and supporting actor for Ed Harris.”

“Toronto movie critics have voted Spike Jonze’s screenwriting satire Adaptation as the best film of 2002, making the wide-open Oscar nominations race even tougher to call. The 25 members of the Toronto Film Critics Association showered Adaptation with kudos in their annual list of year-end prizes, citing the film for best picture, best male performance, best supporting male performance, and best screenplay… Critic and industry groups traditionally kick-start the Oscar nominations process, and this year they’ve been all over the map in assigning glory.”

A much-lauded film from Palestine has been garnering awards worldwide. But the filmmaker has been unequivocably told that his work cannot be nominated for an Academy Award, because Palestine is not a country recognized by the U.N. Of course, neither are Puerto Rico and Taiwan, both of which have had films in nomination in the past.

For years, PBS has been looking for more effective methods of drawing sponsors, whether that meant pitching corporate responsibility or blurring the line between funding announcements and outright advertising. But with the recent pullout of ExxonMobil from its club of program underwriters, PBS (and its Boston flagship, WGBH-TV) is stepping up efforts to secure a money stream for the future.

Pirate radio stations have been broadcasting live from local music clubs in the UK, and police are beginning to crack down, fining club owners. “Between 80 and 100 illegal stations are on air in the UK at any one time, according to the Radiocommunications Agency, who said pirates put lives at risk by interfering with air traffic control and emergency service frequencies.”

Minnesota Public Radio has received an NEA grant of half a million dollars, to “strengthen public radio’s classical programming nationwide.” MPR is one of the biggest programmers of classical music in America. Its Classical 24 satellite service supplies hundreds of public radio stations with music programming.

Todd Haynes’ Technicolor retroflick Far From Heaven took home an armful of awards at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards this week, including best picture, director, and cinematography. Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation also garnered awards.

People who value literature have often lamented the dominance of movies and television in today’s popular culture, fearing that such passive entertainment would eventually bury forever reading as an entertainment. But in the last few years, blockbuster movies such as Lord of the Rings and The Talented Mr. Ripley have sent moviegoers scurrying to bookstores in search of the titles that inspired the films. Publishers, naturally, love the trend.

You’ve likely never seen Andy Serkis, and you very likely won’t until the camera pans to show him as a nominee at the next Academy Awards. Serkis is the human actor behind the creepy voice and complex range of movement of the twisted and obsessive Gollum character in the second film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which you may have heard opens this week. The talk of a possible Oscar nod for Serkis is evidence of the growing seriousness with which virtual characters are being taken in Hollywood.

What if your radio could act as a cellphone one minute, a TV the next, and a PDA after that? “Imagine if the only thing stopping your handheld PDA from simultaneously being a GPS receiver, phone, radio or miniature TV was your willingness to download and install some free software program.” The GNU project is working towards the day…