Category: media

“As Hollywood shrinks its films and television shows for the small screens of cellphones, its assumptions about mobile viewing are being upended by surprisingly patient consumers.”

“There was a time when music videos were purely promotional, and that was fine when people were buying music. Now they’re no longer promotional. We sell advertising in and around them at a premium. Instead of being a marketing expense, videos can be a profit center.”

“So why are the studios capping star salaries, laying off workers and squeezing suppliers? Because none of the gains on the theatrical side, in Blu-ray or via new distribution channels is enough to compensate for the ongoing decline in overall home entertainment, the area from which the studios have drawn their biggest revenues since 1986.”

“Hollywood’s current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches.”

“The dustup revolves around a set of seeming absolutes that, upon closer scrutiny, dissolve into a dizzying array of questions. For starters, were [the writers] trying to ‘make fun’ of Mohammed, were they trying to merely ‘depict’ him, or, once we find ourselves within the mirthful city limits of South Park, Colo. (not to mention the give-no-quarter limits of fundamentalist Islam), is there no meaningful distinction between parody and depiction?”

For the opening title sequence of last week’s episode of The Simpsons, the writers and producers slipped in a potent rejoinder to the dust-up over the way South Park did-or-didn’t depict the Prophet of Islam. The sentence that Bart is shown writing on the blackboard 100 times was different than usual …

“The group produced the site RevolutionMuslim.com — on which images of the fatally stabbed filmmaker Theo van Gogh (a noted critic of Islam) appeared with the caption: ‘Have Matt Stone And Trey Parker Forgotten This?’ Comedy Central censored an episode of ‘South Park’ last week that was to depict Muhammad.”

“The latest mystery in Shanghai, complete with sliding bookshelves, secret passageways and contraband goods, is this: Why are all the popular DVDs and CDs missing from this city’s shops?” As a matter of fact, they aren’t missing at all …

The law “not only undermines several generations of legal progress toward making free speech a day-to-day reality in this country, but also threatens an emerging expressive industry in which California and the United States currently play a leading role. More important, it’s an unnecessary gesture toward child protection in an area millions of parents already are handling competently on their own.”

“New York has always prided itself on granting largely free access to streets, parks and other city-owned locations for TV and film productions but steep budget cuts have forced the city film office to find new sources of revenue.” The city now wants to charge a $300 fee that “would be paid just once by a movie” and once per season by TV shows.