Category: media

“Avatar” is maintaining its popularity in the move from box office to home video, with sales of 6.7 million DVDs and Blu-ray disks in the first four days.

As with every hot trend in Hollywood, it’s uncertain whether the 3-D onslaught is simply a flash, like the push in the 1980s to colorize black-and-white films, or a fundamental transformation akin to the advent of sound in the 1920s. “The real question now is: ‘How many movies per year does the audience want to put on glasses and pay a premium for?’ “

“The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said the country’s cable, pay-for-view and specialty broadcast services posted revenue of $3.1 billion in calendar 2009, a gain of six per cent versus 2008’s $2.9 billion.”

“The potential prize for all this effort: a piece of a box-office gross that grew 43% to $908 million in 2009, after an average of 25% growth in each of the preceding five years. In 2009, 10 Chinese-language films grossed more than 100 million yuan (about $14.6 million), compared with four two years earlier.”

“The practice, while intended to help improve arts coverage in the city (a noble cause), looks (to me) like the payola radio schemes outlawed by Congress in 1960: trying to create a false perception of popularity when the song (or the theater) had to pay for play.”

“Most industries have invisible power players. In Hollywood, one of them is surely Marilyn Gordon.  … Outside of show business, it’s a job that most people do not know even exists: evaluating and approving or disapproving all advertising for rated movies before it can be disseminated.”

“The setback comes as a surprise — and a victory for Hollywood — because federal regulators only in the last week had given the first stage of approval to the exchanges. Included in the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act financial reform package, passed Wednesday by the Senate Agriculture Committee, is a provision banning futures trading on box office.”

“All [of Frank] Baum’s 14 stories about Oz are now out of copyright, meaning that anyone with the means to shoot a movie is free to pilfer from them.” Disney is preparing a prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful (with Sam Mendes directing Robert Downey Jr.). Two CGI versions are in progress, as is a modern-day New York adaptation with Christopher Lloyd as the Wizard.

“Four-hundred years after a nasty occupation of Arab land by the forefathers of these young Turks, the Arab world is embracing Turkey, opening its living rooms and flocking around their television sets to watch over 140 episodes of second-rate Turkish soap operas that don’t even do well in Turkey itself.”

Kevin “Bright, the Emmy-winning producer of the smash sitcom ‘Friends,’ is involved in a groundbreaking partnership with the Perkins School for the Blind.” He “has developed a filmmaking course for blind students, teaching them how to shoot, light, direct, and produce.”