Category: media

Low-budget “art house” movies from around the world have developed an overwhelmingly devoted (and high-paying) audience in Tokyo’s teenagers – a niche market that can single-handedly make or break a film’s worldwide gross. “To illustrate the power of the Japanese mini-theaters, take a look at ‘The Virgin Suicides.’ As of the end of July, the box office for the U.S. movie in overseas markets was about $1.5 million. The breakdown works out to $1 million for a run at a theater in Tokyo and $500,000 from every other cinema in the world where it is being shown.” – Yahoo! News (Reuters)

Hollywood fully expects to be hit with writers’ and actors’ strikes next summer – and predictions are they’ll be long strikes. So production is in full bore now to complete projects before work stops. April 1 is the deadline they’re racing to make. “It’s not a question of if there are going to be strikes. It’s a question of what are you going to do about it.” – Variety

This summer has been a dark one for the movie theater industry. The season is usually the time for the chains to boost their bottom lines, most of which need a lift to pay for all of those state-of-the-art multiplexes the exhibitors have been building across the country.” Instead, several large movie-theatre chains are on the verge of bankruptcy. – Chicago Tribune

“BBC Knowledge, one of the broadcaster’s digital channels, will announce an autumn schedule dominated by televised theatre performances, arthouse films, music and literature. The move is seen, and feared, by critics as the beginning of the ghettoisation of arts programmes.” – The Independent (UK)

New sleek movie versions of Shakespeare leave out something important: words.  “This begins to give some idea of what is lost when Shakespeare’s words take a back seat to the ambitions of directors and critics who are more concerned with their own agendas than with Shakespeare’s poetic art.” – The Atlantic

• “Brooklyn-based historian, author and playwright Charles Mee believes that the greatest plays in human history – those by the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare – would never have been written had copyright laws existed to keep the authors from borrowing from the culture around them. Mee puts his money where his mouth is. He makes the texts of his plays freely available on the Web, and forgoes royalties.” – All Things Considered (NPR) [Real Audio file]

• The leading actress in Al Pacino’s next movie is a computer digitization. “If modern film technology can conjure up dinosaurs, Jabba the Hutt and Bruce Willis with hair, then the substitution of actresses by fleshy cartoons, courtesy of a cheap-labour Korean animation factory, could only have been a matter of time.” – National Post (Canada)

The Academy of Motion Pictures says any internet film not seen in theatres before its web release will not be eligible for Academy awards. So an AMC Theatre in LA opens a new i-film series. The deal is “only one example of the growing relationship between the Internet and Hollywood. Industry insiders like talent agencies, managers, studios and theater owners are trying to help Hollywood translate traditional ways of doing business to the Internet.” – Los Angeles Times

— are protesting California Governor Gray Davis awarding a fake Oscar to Bill Clinton Monday. “The motion picture industry’s highest accolade can be awarded only by the artists who make up the academy, and only for accomplishments relating to motion pictures.” – BBC

Hollywood has the capacity to excite the public about just about anything – which is why NASA has been bending over backwards to help Hollywood make its space movies more authentic. It goes something like this: if people get space-crazy, NASA may get more support from Congress. – The Age (Melbourne) (AP)