Category: media

“Multiplex cinemas and 3D films can ramp up prices and the Choice study said that if an Australian family of four visited a multiplex-style cinema they would be $67 poorer after paying $18 each for adult tickets and $15.50 for concessions. A family across the ditch in New Zealand would pay only $33 and a family in the US at a similar cinema would pay $38.40.”

“Writers’ Guild general secretary Bernie Corbett has accused the BBC of “pointless cultural vandalism” following the news that Radio 4 is to cut the number of dramatic readings it broadcasts from next year.”

“Playing that fine line while lessening what’s lost in translation so that movies work globally is a delicate yet increasingly important business as Hollywood relies more on international audiences to bolster profits.”

“The latest installments of Hollywood blockbusters like Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 have been delayed … In the meantime countless moviegoers have been driven into cinemas as part of a government campaign to promote a sprawling epic about the Chinese Communist Party.”

“Despite the invention of TV, video and the internet, the cinema as an entertainment model has been relatively robust; in fact, the act of going to the cinema as a ”live” experience, like a music concert, is arguably surviving because it cannot be illegally downloaded; and stars are seen as a vital component of this experience. But things are changing.”

“According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top 50 Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. The tracking technology is designed to personalize the Internet experience for each user and, more importantly, to optimize the efficiency of advertising online. The result is an Internet that is increasingly good at giving us what we want and increasingly bad at giving us what we need.”

“Sony… has emerged as the perhaps the closest contemporary approximation of a classic studio. Its movies change, but those who make them remain remarkably consistent, thanks to personal relationships and shared tastes that have largely supplanted the rigid contractual arrangements that allowed Mayer to build an empire around the likes of Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore and Clark Gable.”

“The government’s proposed changes to the Foreign Performers Certification Scheme Guidelines would make it easier to use imported actors for film and television productions, including those partially funded by the government or receiving the 40 per cent producer tax offset.”

“The film’s distributor, Warner Bros, reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, made $92.1m (£57m) in North America on Friday. The previous single-day record belonged to The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which made $72.7m (£45m) on its opening day.”

“One would assume that when a country has the fastest and most adaptable consumers to modern media, we would have invented a few of the world’s leading websites. Why do we not have one television network or specialty TV network that is carried around the world, despite having had the highest and most advanced cable penetration of any market in the world for three decades?”