Category: media

The first satellite radio broadcaster is in orbit. “The satellite is one of three that Sirius will use to broadcast its 100 CD-quality music, news, sports, and talk radio channels for a monthly charge of $9.95.” Will it kill conventional radio as we know it? – Wired 07/10/00

Chicago’s WTTW public broadcaster reinvents as a multi-media local portal, putting its emphasis on local cultural programming and throwing out a challenge to other public broadcasters. – Chicago Tribune 07/10/00

In the old days (the 1990s), it seemed like every Irish film played on nostalgic stereotypes. Now a new set of stereotypes have taken over. “Perhaps the moguls have simply updated their clichés – and, just as every Hollywood success spawns a raft of imitations, Irish films come in thematic waves. Rural melodrama is out; Dublin-based drug barons with dubious accents are in. It may not be much of a new wave, but at least it’s more exciting than the old one.” – The Sunday Times (UK) 07/09/00

Organizers of Britain’s top film awards, the BAFTAs, rescheduled the annual ceremony for a month before the Academy Awards – an unabashed attempt to upstage (and hopefully influence) the Oscar outcomes. – Sydney Morning Herald 07/07/00 

Filmmaker George Lucas has hired San Francisco choreographer Michael Smuin to choreograph scenes for the next “Star Wars” movie. “George envisioned the saber fight to be more dancelike this time,” said Smuin. “It took three people to accomplish this: a sword master, a Cirque du Soleil acrobat and a dancer with the Australia Ballet.” – San Francisco Chronicle 07/07/00

A truck driver in Los Angeles has been sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay $50,000 for stealing 55 Oscar statuettes shortly before this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. – BBC 07/07/00

• “Survivor,” “The Real World,” “1900 House,” and now “Big Brother” – Why the current obsession with voyeurism and so-called “reality television”? “The camera has become central to Hollywood’s notions of voyeurism, also privacy. To generations raised on television, just sitting in the dark and watching surreptitiously now seems normal. But, add a camera, or a 100 hidden cameras as a new film recently did, and it’s still possible to make the concept feel pretty racy.” – NPR 07/06/00 [Real Audio file]

This spring, US presidential candidate Al Gore launched an investigation into why so many movie productions are heading north to Canada. Now completion of the report has been delayed because of potential political ramifications. If the report attacks Canadian tax incentives to the movie industry, “state incentives (in the United States) may be vulnerable under international trade rules, just as (states) would argue that what Canada is doing is vulnerable under international trade rules. – Toronto Star 07/06/00

French intellectuals, celebrities and movie makers took to the streets of Paris Wednesday to defend a hardcore movie panned by the critics and banned from general movie theatres by the French censors. The demonstration took place in front of an MK2 cinema in Paris’ Latin Quarter. The theater is one of 20 that have been defying the State Council’s ruling. – Variety 07/06/00

• CENSORSHIP WARNING: French Culture Minister Catherine Tasca warned that the court ruling raised the prospect of a return to state censorship. – BBC 07/06/00

Zhang Yimou is revered in the West as one of China’s greatest filmmakers. But his name is still inseparable from that of Gong Li, his partner for eight years and the star of the cycle of six Zhang films. Most were historical dramas with strong political undertones. Now that the pair has split, Zhang’s last two films have none of the lush sense of historical sweep we associate with his name, and you couldn’t imagine Gong Li playing in either of them. – The Age (Melbourne) 07/06/00