Category: media

“Want to enjoy the benefits of a super-sharp high-definition screen without buying a new TV? Simply tell yourself that you are watching HD and put up a few posters to transform your experience. That’s one implication of a Dutch study into how people’s expectations affect their television viewing experience.”

Guru Dutt, revered as one of the great directors of Bollywood’s golden age in the 1950s and ’60s, is sometimes referred to as the “Orson Welles of India” – in part because the two men had similar rise-and-fall career trajectories.

The Federal Trade Commission sets “an unreasonably low threshold for blog posts to be treated as ads, potentially turning ethical lapses into violations of federal law. Merely receiving review copies of games, gadgets or discs for free — as critics in traditional media routinely do — could bring bloggers under the FTC’s purview.”

As the Supreme Court hears arguments in a First Amendment case, filmmakers worry “that a ruling for the government could make it harder for the Michael Moores of the world to take on controversial subjects.” The government is asking the court to “treat depictions of cruelty to animals the same as child pornography.”

“[Sen. Al] Franken acknowledged that as a copyright holder himself, both as an author and former talk-show host, he believes that artists are entitled to legal protections. He stated that ‘Internet service providers must retain the right to control unlawful usage of the Internet,’ but he stopped short of saying how he defined ‘unlawful usage.'”

“[B]eginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.”

“It used to be that Hollywood’s corporate parents could stomach a dry spell from their studio managers. But as DVD sales have collapsed by as much as 25% at some studios, access to outside financing has vanished and production and marketing costs remain sky-high, media companies are cracking under all the pressure.”

“Respecting the source, traditionally, is not what Hollywood does to children’s books. … But why should the studios treat classic texts with kid gloves when they’re rewarded so well for ‘modernizing’ them?”

“More than 60 years after the Nazi genocide and the founding of the state of Israel, … and more than a century into the Ashkenazi passage through the North American melting pot, the old puzzles persist … In novels, on television and especially, lately, on movie screens, fresh expositions of ancient dilemmas and anxieties quarrel and contend. Nothing is settled.”

“The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam has begun airing the only known video of the teenage diarist on a channel dedicated to her on YouTube. The channel also features clips of others, including her late father Otto and Nelson Mandela, talking about Anne.”