Category: media

“The theater was packed for a 9 p.m. Saturday screening of the Martin Scorsese film when the moviegoer complained about a woman near him using a cellphone. The woman and two men with her left the theater. But sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said two men returned a few minutes later and stabbed the victim.” With a meat thermometer.

“Because exhibitors want to discourage studios from releasing films on DVD before they finish playing in theaters, they generally refuse to re-book a movie after it’s available in home entertainment formats. They do occasionally bend that rule,” but few are flexible in the case of best-picture Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker.”

“Boys didn’t want to see a movie with ‘princess’ in the title.” So Disney has renamed its upcoming animated version of the Rapunzel tale “Tangled,” and its “marketing campaign will amp up the role of the dashing Errol Flynn-styled male lead…. Hints of swashbuckling action are already being leaked online.”

“One of the oldest free mediums, [television] has something to teach us about free information: It can be expensive. And, perhaps, we would be better off if we were allowed to pay for it.”

“This year the entertainment industry woke up to a clear if troubling realization: the Oscars telecast exposed an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in full-fledged identity crisis. Almost everything about the ceremony was big and commercial; almost everything about the winners was small and arty.”

“A-list actors, who in years gone by could expect to bank anything from $20-$30m [£13.3-£20m] a film, are still waiting for salaries to return to anything like pre-slump levels. Fewer studio movies are being made, and a troubled independent film sector is so far unable to pick up the slack.”

“The 18-hour blackout began at 12:01 a.m. Sunday morning when some 3.3 million Cablevision subscribers in the New York area lost their ABC signal after the cable operator and WABC didn’t make any progress in their tense negotiations over retransmission consent. “

Walt Disney Co. pulled the signal of its New York television station WABC-TV from Cablevision System Corp.’s 3.1 million cable TV homes early Sunday morning Eastern time, right in the middle of a rerun of “Lost.”

“At issue are fees Walt Disney Co. wants Cablevision to pay to carry WABC. Cablevision says Disney is asking for $40 million annually for the right to retransmit the local television station’s signal. That would translate to about $1 per subscriber, per month. Disney has denied that isits asking price, but has not said what it is seeking.”

“TV sets with high-tech glasses are in the works, and several stations are gearing up to meet the need, including an ESPN 3-D network that will kick off with this summer’s soccer World Cup.”