Category: media

“I realize the economy is still in distress and Afghanistan looks grimmer by the day, but I can’t help wondering what it portends for the republic that the latest hits by two of today’s hottest video phenoms, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, both feature their stars sporting what may best be described as gun bras.”

“Starz Entertainment CEO Chris Albrecht and his associates have been meeting with potential partners throughout the world to raise $1 billion of off-balance-sheet financing for original programming, sources said.”

“The frenzy of film-making comes after a lacklustre 2009 and is in large part due, say industry officials, to a new 20 percent tax rebate offered for foreign features and television productions.”

The major studios had hoped that Twitter would be an ideal viral marketing tool; they found out that it’s no more predictable or controllable than any other form of word-of-mouth. But the microblog site “could be growing into an exceptional advertising platform.”

“According to the results of a study just released by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, exactly 0 (zero!) percent of the the 2010 Digital Future Report’s 1,981 participants said they would consider paying for the popular – and to this point, free – social messaging service.”

“RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, has been dealt a double blow by two unconnected events – director general Cathal Goan has announced he is stepping down and the station has been put on a list of state companies to be considered for privatisation” as part of an effort to reduce Ireland’s national debt.

Beginning in 2008, the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald tried to turn the website HSX.com (for Hollywood Stock Exchange) – a sort of online fantasy league where people could bet imaginary money on films’ box office results – into an actual futures market where traders bet real money. Then all Hollywood came together to stop the scheme, even to the point of lobbying Congress.

“The Australian Film Classification Board has banned the ‘soft-core’ version of Toronto filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s gay zombie film, L.A. Zombie, which was slated to screen twice next week at the Melbourne International Film Festival.”

“A lawsuit over the rights to the award-winning film Precious has been dismissed after Lionsgate Films and The Weinstein Co. reached an agreement, lawyers for Lionsgate said on Thursday.”

“No show in American television history, it is safe to say, has ever put so much effort into maintaining historically appropriate ways of speaking – and no show has attracted so much scrutiny for its efforts.”