Category: media

With more than 2 million players sold and thousands of titles available, the DVD has become the most successful consumer product ever. But some in the movie industry are still resisting, fearing that safeguards against piracy aren’t good enough. – Boston Globe 07/30/00

They still have tiny audiences, but short digital movies are hot right now. “Not just showing them, but clamoring for them; building businesses around them; showcasing them in film festivals; nominating them for Academy Awards, and, perhaps most significantly, paying for them.” – Chicago Sun-Times 07/30/00

• ON THE OTHER HAND: An internet movie “George Lucas in Love” that cost  $25,000 “premiered last October on MediaTrip.com, one of several new Web sites that offer short films to Internet users. An instant hit, it was streamed to 150,000 homes in its first three weeks, and more than 1 million to date.” Now for sale on Amazon, it consistently outsells Lucas’s latest “Star Wars” installment. – San Francisco Chronicle 07/30/00

Tod Machover and MIT’s thinky Media Lab have set up shop in Ireland. “They believe Dublin will host the creation of an entirely new, large-scale art form that combines a variety of media. ‘We need to figure out what comes after theatre, what comes after cinema,’ Machover says. ‘We’re hoping to develop a large part of it in Ireland.'” – Irish Times 07/28/00

A group of deaf movie fans has sued movie theatre chains under the Americans with Disabilities Act, seeking to force the theatres to accommodate them. “We’re looking for some form of captioning for the hearing impaired to be able to access first-run movies at the same time as the non-disabled.” – Wired 07/28/00

A former Australian Broadcasting Company producer enumerates ABC’s many shortcomings as he sees them. “Mr Moore also accused the ABC of class bias towards people educated in private schools, adding it was too literal, pompous, middle-brow, and lacking in irony and a sense of humour.” – The Age (Melbourne) 07/28/00

The New York Times has discontinued Matt Mirapaul’s column on art and technology. “The column was one of the first in the mainstream press to report on the intersection of art and technology, including ‘Web-based art exhibits, interactive music, hypertext fiction and other expressions of digital creativity.” – Wired 07/28/00

The actors strike in the US against producers of commercials has been a boon to the Canadian production industry as producers head north to get their projects done. – CBC 07/27/00

Berlin’s public access channel is under fire and in danger of losing its spot on the broadcast band. “Opponents say the channel is out of date and a refuge for egomaniacs and the mentally disturbed. They argue the special-interest groups don’t reflect society as a whole.” – Die Welt (Germany) 07/27/00

Guy movies may no longer fall into the category or beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, testosterone-y macho propaganda – there seems to be a new wave of films that present more feeling, sensitive men. “John Wayne on a prairie, the man alone, definitely is something I can’t relate to,” says one director. “I want to love, I have needs. Men around me in my life, they’ve got needs. In this day and age, I think it’s become necessary to depict that.” – The Age (Melbourne) 07/26/00

Toronto is crawling with movie projects this summer. “In the first half of 2000, the value of production in Toronto was $352.8 million, according to agency data. That’s an increase of 15.2 per cent, from $306.2 million in the first six months of last year, and it doesn’t include the millions of dollars spent on TV commercials, animation and special effects.” Sixty-one percent of the projects come from the US. – Toronto Star 07/26/00