Category: media

“Sunday’s show proves that the once-powerful network television business has finally reached a point where it can’t put aside fretting about its systemic problems, even on a supposedly celebratory night dedicated to bestowing laurels and gratitude.”

“While Burns is one of the best known and most watched documentarian of recent times, he has also acquired his share of detractors. Though he’s generally respected by critics and scholars, a backlash has been building, dismissing him as middlebrow, charging that he’s repeating himself, that he’s too earnest, too dark or naively patriotic.”

“Along with the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto stands out as a must-visit destination for movie distributors looking to buy new, highbrow works. Yet as successful as the festival has been in premiering any number of art-house breakouts in recent years, the shopper silence at the just-concluded Canadian gathering was deafening.”

A list of all the winners.

“The events of the last year have knocked some sparkle out of most Americans’ lives. This year when network executives turned to research to discern what recession-battered viewers wanted, they braced themselves for bitterness. But they discovered something surprising.”

“Before coming to Toronto, the film wowed audiences at the Sundance festival, taking the grand jury and audience awards there.”

“If this year’s Emmy telecast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, does not post significant gains over last year’s audience of 12.3 million, more changes could be in the works. But based just on the nominations for the 61st annual prime-time Emmys, which will be broadcast at 8 p.m. on Sunday on CBS, the show will be heavy with recognition of shows that much of the viewing public does not regularly watch.”

“The auteur movement in film has been declared dead as often as rock ‘n’ roll, which has been around for almost as many decades. No one was playing taps for auteurs at TIFF, but signs of a new willingness to combine vision with populism were unmistakeable.”

Director Sam Mendes tells the BBC that “the movies in the middle are almost getting squeezed out, which is the big dramas, the movies that do cost a bit of money… with well-known actors in them,”

“The Culture Ministry has estimated that 1,000 French Internet users a day could be taken offline under the bill. Pirates who ignore email warnings and a registered letter could see their Internet connections cut for up to a year, and they could also face up to $435,000 in fines or jail time.”