Category: media

“Back in 1909, projectionists would stand in the middle of a venue and hand crank 10-minute one-reelers. Some moviegoers would even sit near the projector because they liked the intermittent click-click sound of the cranking.” Next week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will re-create that experience.

Many webisodes “are being created specifically for advertisers, borrowing a strategy from the early days of radio and television when shows like ‘The Kraft Music Hall,’ ‘The Bell Telephone Hour,’ ‘Lux Radio Theater’ and ‘Schlitz Playhouse of Stars’ entertained Americans while selling cheese, phone service, soap and beer.”

“[R]esearchers found that toddlers, ages 1 to 3, in home-based day-care centers watched an average of 1.6 hours of television there each day, including videos and DVDs. Preschool-age children, 3 to 5 years old, watched 2.4 hours a day in home-based centers.” That’s not counting their viewing at home.

“Seeking to recast the studio for the digital era, Rich Ross and Bob Iger have set in motion a plan to dramatically challenge entrenched practices, potentially pitting Disney against theater owners, retailers and other business partners. The gambit, if it works, could be emulated by other studios. If it backfires, it could undermine what has historically been the creative heart of Disney.”

Critic Armond White wrote, “Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious.” Responds the novelist Sapphire, “With Michelle, Sasha and Malia and Obama in the White House and in the post-Cosby Show era, people can’t say these are the only images out there.”

Media psychologist Stuart Fischoff, “says Winfrey is a master of impression management. … People seek leaders who will guide their decisions, according to Fischoff, and he says Winfrey exhibits the very qualities people look for in leaders – authenticity and trust.  … Plus, he adds, Winfrey is smart and unguarded with her faults, which shows her humanity.”

Forbes has made a list based on studios’ return on investment.

The titles will make it possible for deaf users to read videos. “The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels.”

“Most of the top-grossing and critically praised documentaries of the year [are not on the list], including Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, Chris Rock’s Good Hair, the struggling rock band chronicle Anvil! The Story of Anvil and R.J. Cutler’s inside peek at Vogue magazine, The September Issue. (The Michael Jackson doc This Is It was released too late to be eligible.)

Patrick Goldstein: “Let’s be honest. Is there really anyone who is up in arms over Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story being left off the Academy’s 15-title short list for the best feature documentary? In fact, I would argue that when it comes to a snub of a much-ballyhooed film, the Academy has never managed to make more people happier.”