Category: media

“Amazon.com is launching Amazon Studios, a new website that lets users upload scripts and sample movies and then use community tools to evaluate and edit each others’ work. Work judged the best by a panel of experts and company executives will be brought to Warner Bros.”

The Valley of the Wolves franchise covers the continuing adventures of “a nationalist undercover agent – Turkey’s answer to James Bond and Rambo – who takes on Turkey’s enemies.” The latest installment, opening in January, sees our hero on a mission of revenge for Israel’s attack of the Gaza flotilla – a plot that could harm already tense relations with Israel.

Director Sara Driver’s 1983 version of Bowles’s short story “You Are Not I” – the first-ever film adaptation of the author’s work – was thought to be gone for good when the director’s negative was ruined by water damage. Then Bowles’s own copy of the movie was located in Tangier.

Robert Drew’s “truly signal innovation was to recognize the drama in unscripted, unforced moments of life. Documentary films before he came along had mostly been illustrated lectures … Drew thought that real-time imagery could go it alone: Just get a camera rolling and park it on the shoulder of a cinematographer able to melt into the shadows.”

“An era’s great flops serve countless functions in pushing the art and industry of filmmaking forward. They introduce technological innovations. They help filmmakers and actors – those that manage to work again, at least – learn how to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. … Alcoholics often need to hit rock bottom before turning their lives around. This is the role that flops play for some actors.”

“Collectively, the highest-earning men made $1.2 billion between June 1, 2009 and June 1, 2010, compared to the $835 million the women brought home in the same time period.”

Interviews with a dozen former studio executives, producers, directors, screenwriters and academics confirmed that, while still admired, films focusing on working-class characters like “Norma Rae” and “Silkwood” are considered so last century. Even 10 years ago “Erin Brockovich” only got the go-ahead after Julia Roberts signed on to star.

“What happens when movies change, and stunts become devalued? I ask because in looking at that image of the stuntman diving into the Hudson, and running through a mental checklist of my favorite movie stunts, I realized that almost none of them occurred in films released during the last 10 years.”

“Advertisers maintain that over-50 types are less susceptible to the lure of commercials – a notion that dates to the early 1970s and appears to be without much factual basis.
But change may be afoot.”

“The studio has quietly launched Disney Movies Online, which lets consumers buy or rent digital versions of Disney and Pixar films and watch them on the Internet. The site was conceived as a bridge to gently transition the family entertainment company’s mainstream consumers from the physical to the digital world.”