Category: media

“Having invested billions of dollars building their networks, some pay-TV companies have shown little inclination to get out of the business of packaging television channels and become mere conduits for other companies’ data. Some major entertainment companies also have an interest in preserving the current model of television viewing because they want cable companies to take bundles of their channels, rather than just cherry-picking the most popular ones.”

“The agreement marks the first time that a broadcast radio network will pay performers when their music plays on its airwaves, but the deal also has implications for Internet radio.”

“The Iron Lady cost $14 million to make, Streep said, and generated $114 million in global ticket sales. ‘Pure profit,’ Streep said, noting that despite the strong showing, studios continue to make few movies specifically targeted at women. ‘Why? Why? Why? Don’t they want the money?’ Streep asked” at the Women in Film awards ceremony.

“For media firms, an app pact with Facebook is Faustian by nature: it may achieve virality, but it involves letting Facebook keep their customers within the confines of its walled garden. There’s a whiff of desperation about the whole idea, like record companies trying to mitigate declining sales by giving up control to Apple. Twitter, on the other hand, is all about links to the rest to the web.”

Rai “recently traveled to the Kaiserburg Museum in Nuremberg, Germany, to study the kind of metalwork detail that went into making suits of armor. For a recent order of World War II helmets, he ensured the leather liners were stamped with numbers used by the original manufacturers. That kind of effort, he says, helps protect his business from competition. ‘This is painstaking, labor-intensive work. There’s a lot of research that has gone into our inventory, and that’s not easy to replicate,’ he said.”

Phil Hoad argues that, nearly two decades after the end of apartheid, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest film industry (after Nigeria’s) is still beholden to Hollywood and its outlook, while the country’s black majority is underrepresented in everything from acting and directing (even Tsotsi and District 9 had white directors) to access to movie screens.

“As reality TV gets meaner (combative contestants appear to be chosen for their warm relationship with psychopathy,) it gets softer and sweeter at the same time.”

“The striking images Ridley Scott devises … reference everything from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. Scott also expands on the original Alien universe by creating a distinctly English mythology informed by Milton’s Paradise Lost and the symbolic drawings of William Blake.”

This year, there’s “a small cluster of pictures that will try to defy modern economic forces in the movie industry; they will bring realistic stories about recognizable characters in a familiar world to major studio schedules, at the height of the summer blockbuster season. It is a daring step.”

“The measures are a result of steep budget cuts imposed by the Dutch government and a concomitant change in focus. Providing the world with a realistic image of the Netherlands, as we have proudly done since 1947, will no longer be one of our statutory duties.”