Category: media

“Looking back to the start of 2009, it’s clear that sophisticated movies targeted at grown-ups are struggling to find audiences.”

The decision means the participants are entitled to all the benefits of a full employment contract, including a 35-hour week.

“The series of linked 5- to 10-minute shorts, aimed first on the Web and then perhaps television, will be set at a point in time before 2019, when the Harrison Ford movie takes place in a dystopian Los Angeles.”

“The British film-maker has apparently bought the film rights to Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, a 2004 book by Suketu Mehta, the Indian-born, New York-based journalist and author, for an undisclosed sum. Mehta’s first book, a searing account of Mumbai – part personal essay, part travelogue – received global acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.”

“YouTube is becoming increasingly important to the music business. In fact, some industry professionals say it has become the MTV of the digital generation. In the old days, new bands created buzz by playing clubs and getting on local radio. Today, record labels often gauge a new band’s popularity by looking on YouTube” and promote their own bands on the site.

“Why does this particular franchise work in other places, but not for an American audience that seems so suited? Perhaps it is that people in Britain have more of an appetite for watching celebrities being punished … for the sins of being famous and having all the perks in life. This could be less appealing to a US audience … because celebrity is – like any other part of the American Dream – a form of self-built success?”

Hollywood’s “‘background’ performers don’t speak on camera, and they are forbidden to talk to the director or the stars. But some make a pretty good living just by staying in the background. Unemployed locals have noticed. The lines are longer than ever at Hollywood’s Central Casting, where anyone can register as an extra.”

“The U.K. government wants to cooperate with the U.S. to curb illegal downloads of music, films and TV shows. In a press confab with media scribes, Media Minister Andy Burnham said, ‘It’s my aim that we develop an international consensus on illegal downloading.’ … But the media minister ruled out criminal sanctions for people who download content for free.”

“This year IFC will release about 100 films ‘on demand’, meaning they can be called up for a fee in most households that get their television via cable or satellite. … Later this year IFC plans to launch a new on-demand channel to showcase documentary films. Cinetic, a powerful independent-film broker, will also get into the game this summer. Most radical of all is Magnolia,” which will release the Jeff Daniels comedy The Answer Man on cable four weeks before its theatrical opening.

“What else makes a good death scene? Good dialogue, obviously … Dignity is often helpful but not make-or-break, and sometimes it’s actually a stumbling block. Heavy symbolism is even worse, as in Willem Dafoe’s Christlike pose at the end of Platoon (1986). Get off the cross, Willem, we need the wood.”