“It’s a mystery how Thurber’s 1939 story of an ordinary man’s daydreams … should have attracted the notice of so many producers of large and noisy entertainments. … The really surprising thing is that these big-budget adaptations so far have been successful with audiences, despite the massive liberties taken with the original story. This practice has been enraging Mitty fans since the 1940s.”
Category: media
Nostalgia For The Video Store
“Like trawling between shelves at a bookshop, there was something about cruising down to the video store — the inevitable bickering about which movie to get (“We’ll never watch five movies in three days!”), the sniggering over the hilariously bad triple-X titles, and the secret longing that all five copies of Batman Begins weren’t already out.”
Academy Introduces Electronic Voting For Oscars
“This year, for the first time, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will offer its members the option of electronic voting rather than the traditional paper ballot.”
Shazam Makes Its Move Into Television
“Shazam has long been an essential companion to the radio, tagging songs so that anyone can track down what they are listening to at any time. Now Shazam is pursuing the television market, launching a major update to its app that will enable its 80 million users in the U.S. to tag any TV program on any channel.”
New BBC Chief Says He’ll Refocus On “Creative Quality”
Unveiling his plans to staff today, Entwistle said he intended to “change the way” the BBC is led, in order to put the emphasis on “creative people doing creative things”.
Silver Linings Playbook Takes Top Prize At Toronto Film Fest
“The offbeat romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook, David O Russell’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning The Fighter, has won the top prize at the Toronto film festival,” the People’s Choice Award. “Toronto has no jury but its top prize is nevertheless a useful indicator of future Oscars success.”
The Tempted Husband, The Crazy Stalker, And That Poor Bunny Rabbit: Fatal Attraction, 25 Years On
“You’d think that a quarter-century later the movie’s melodrama about the dangers of straying would have badly dated. You’d be wrong. Fatal Attraction still expresses our Puritan queasiness about sexual desire much better than the swarm of stalker rip-offs that it has spawned – as well as our insistence on blaming the skank for any threat to marital fidelity.”
That Theatre Snacks Lawsuit? Tossed.
Dang it: Price-gouging movie theatre concessions case is thrown out of court in Michigan. (Good news for Netflix, though.)
Will Netflix Lose The Hitler Channel (Not To Mention Dog the Bounty Hunter)?
Eh-oh: “Some of the most popular and longest-running cable series of recent years could be leaving Netflix, including History’s ‘Ice Road Truckers,’ ‘Pawn Stars’ and ‘American Pickers’ and A&E’s ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter,’ ‘Gene Simmons: Family Jewels,’ ‘Hoarders’ and ‘Intervention.'”
How’s That Angry Birds Movie Thing Working Out, Then?
Can apps become movies? Studios say maybe.