Category: media

“In its third annual Network Responsibility Index, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found that of HBO’s 14 original prime-time series, 10 included content reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people. That totaled 42 percent of the network’s programming hours…. By contrast, on NBC and CBS only 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of prime-time hours included them, the report said.”

“One of the largest movie prop shops in the world is closing. Since the 70s, 20th Century Props has been supplying set decorations for films from Moulin Rouge to Blade Runner. The economy, the last writers strike and productions leaving Hollywood for cheaper locations are all reasons why the shop is closing.”

“There are more and better roles for women on one season of ‘Brothers and Sisters’ and ‘Big Love’ or ‘Damages’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ than there will be in an entire year of Hollywood films. Roles that require depth and wisdom and boundless energy, that demand of their performers the dramatic flexibility and exploration of character. Roles that don’t seem to punish them simply for being women.”

“Chinese computer hackers defaced the website of Australia’s biggest film festival in Melbourne after it defied a request from the Communist Party not to show a documentary about a controversial Uighur activist. … Hackers attacked the website on Saturday, posting an image of the Chinese flag and leaving slogans criticising” the activist.

“The Melbourne International Film Festival has it all: dramas involving officials from foreign governments, larger than life characters sticking to matters of principles whatever the consequences and the struggles for liberation.” And all of that is off-screen. “In some respects, the most surprising thing about these kerfuffles is not that they have happened, but that they don’t happen more often. While most of us think of film festivals as cultural events, the truth is that they are also deeply political events.”

“Comedy is always tough to explain, but the magic of the Mighty Boosh is particularly elusive. The show’s opening sequence calls it a ‘”journey through time and space,’ but it’s more like a fantastical children’s show for pop culturally overloaded adult brains, a mash-up of fairy-tale plots, surreal humor, nimble dialogue, twisted musical numbers and homespun visuals and animation.”

“There have been some well-received documentaries on the subject (Comedian, The Aristocrats) and some memorable performance films. But the consensus in the comedy world is that … [e]ven the better movies on the subject – including those made by star-directors who should know better, like Richard Pryor and Billy Crystal – are full of tired showbiz clichés and central characters who are stereotypically unhappy, insecure, neurotic or even … downright certifiable.”

So goes the plaint about a new wave of indie movies in Blighty. Says one producer-director, “There is a certain amount of familiarity breeding contempt. This is true of British distributors as well as of British critics. We [the British] tend toward the exotic. If things are too familiar, they are often considered less interesting.”

Andrew Pulver: “The British don’t do art cinema. Social realism is our thing, or period movies, or rom-coms, or satire. That’s the received wisdom, anyhow. … Until now. Quietly, with little fuss, and almost no critical fanfare, it looks as though we are in the middle of a British art-cinema bonanza, the like of which we haven’t seen for decades.”

Author Robert Sellers revisits the scene, where Francis Ford Coppola was writing the script on the fly, cast and crew were dealing with tropical diseases and typhoons and heart attack and seizures, and Marlon Brando refused to work with Dennis Hopper. (Not to mention the dead bodies …)