Category: media

“How did Imax win over Hollywood? For starters, next-generation Imax projection systems, which rely on digital images rather than film, sharply lowered costs. Before digital arrived, a single Imax print of a major Hollywood film could run $60,000, according to Warner Brothers, compared with about $1,000 for a standard print. Imax’s digital prints cost about $500 each.”

“What we are watching, probably, is the slow death of The Tonight Show as an institution in the U.S. popular culture. It’s dying because NBC is killing it with a punch here and a stab in the back there. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that Jay Leno’s show will be a disaster, especially in the ratings, if a competing network has a hot drama airing at 10 on a weeknight. But NBC won’t let go of Leno’s show easily or quickly. For a start, rumour has it that Leno will walk away with tens of millions of dollars if the plug is pulled early.”

“His overall compensation, including benefits and expenses, was $528,800, a drop of $211,290 from the preceding year’s reported package of $740,090. That package made Marrazzo the country’s highest-paid local public broadcasting executive, when compared with other stations’ tax filings.”

“Thanks to digital technology, designers can squeeze so many functions into such tiny containers that there is more computing power in a basic cellphone (not a fancy model, like a BlackBerry or iPhone, just a cheap one) than at NASA’s headquarters when it began in 1958. That is why the appearance of most digital products bears no relation to what they do.”

Among those to take retirement packages are some of CBC’s most experienced reporters, including Brian Stewart, of The National, Steve Finkelman, a municipal affairs reporter in Edmonton, and John McGrath, who covers Queen’s Park in Toronto.

“The history of a TV series, like the history of a nation or an art movement, falls into four periods — primitive, classic, baroque and decadent.”

Texas’ film commissioner has denied “as much as 17% in film incentives” to the makers of a movie about the Branch Davidian compound standoff, basing “his veto on a little-known provision in Texas’ film-incentive legislation known as the content clause, which states that anything that portrays the state in a negative or embarrassing light can be denied a government grant.” The filmmakers say the rejection “amounts to censorship and a snuffing of artistic freedom.”

“The advocacy arm of the American Medical Association unveiled a summer-long campaign on Wednesday intended to publicly shame movie studios for depicting images of smoking in their mass-appeal movies. ‘Which Movie Studios Will Cause the Most Youth to Start Smoking This Summer?’ is the name of the effort. … The studio found to be the biggest offender will be named on billboards in September.”

“After months of uncertainty, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, whose future was threatened early this year when it received an order of eviction from a city-owned building in TriBeCa, has found a new home, and on terms that are likely to make it the envy of other arts organizations and tenants across the city.” Its new landlord is a developer/film aficionado.

Danny Boyle “travelled out with producer Christian Colson after hearing the children’s illegal slum homes had been bulldozed by the city authorities. Shortly after arriving, Boyle said he would be pushing through his plan to buy the two families flats in Mumbai.”