Monday December
31
THE
LOWLY WRITER: So TV writers' pay is getting cut because the
American networks are losing money? No one's getting rich here,
certainly not writers. "There are about 150 series per year
with about an average of 10 staffers each, or about 1,500 staff
writer/writer-producer, prime-time jobs per year. There are a
required two freelance scripts given out per series for a maximum
of about 300 freelance scripts per year. That's 1,800 possible
jobs being fought for by over 10,000 active WGA West members (not
including East Coast WGA members) and the additional how-many-more
tens of thousands more non-guild members attempting to break in."
Los Angeles Times 12/31/01
- Previously: LOWLY
SCREENWRITERS REGAIN THEIR LOWLY PLACE: For a brief time
in the mid-90s, screenwriters were pulling in multi-million-dollar
contracts for scripts they hadn't even written yet. But after
some high-profile flops, "screenwriters are back to being the
bastard children of Hollywood. There was a bit of a backlash
to all the big screenplay deals in the late 80's and early 90's.
We're paying for it now." The New
York Times 12/09/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
NOT
INTERESTED IN DIGITAL TV: One year after digital TV became
available in Australia, fewer than 10,000 Australian households
have bought digital converters. That's 80 percent below projections.
"Advocates of the new digital technology - which allows for
interactive viewing - hope for improved sales next year."
Sydney Morning Herald 12/31/01
THE
STAR IS A MURDERER? The Iranian movie Kandahar has
had rave reviews in the international press this year. "However,
it is now being claimed that one of the film's amateur actors
is in fact the prime suspect in a political assassination that
took place more than 20 years ago." BBC
12/30/01
Sunday December
30
AT
ODDS WITH THE CRITICS: The Top 10 Movie lists of critics and
audiences are very different. "Comparing our Top 10 list
with theirs is like scanning the menus at McDonald's and Chez
Panisse. Both have potatoes. We loved Rush Hour 2. The
critics adored The Man Who Wasn't There. We dug The
Mummy Returns. They preferred Ghost World. Not a single
foreign word appears on our list." So what good are critics?
Washington Post 12/27/01
ANOTHER
SIGN OF MOVIES MOVING OUT OF AMERICA: Every American state
has one - a state film office that markets locations and facilitates
permits for the movie industry. Now Washington State, which attracted
$50 million worth of movie business in 2000, is considering closing
its film office because of huge state revenue shortfalls. One
reason for the cut? Movie business has dried up in the state as
productions shoot in Canada. Seattle
Times 12/30/01
Friday December
28
THE
EVIL THAT IS HOLLYWOOD: Is the Hollywood film industry "a
sort of Frankenstein that has high-concepted itself into a weird,
ugly blandness while stomping on fragile cinematic cultures worldwide
even as it attempts to befriend, co-opt, and sometimes imitate
them?" A new book charges corruption and coziness between
Hollywood and the American government, which encourages a bland
status quo. American Prospect 12/17/01
- CONSPIRACY
OR PLAIN INCOMPETENCE? So when exactly did Hollywood
go bad? The whole culture of big-budget filmmaking is so generic
and unadventurous that even as earth-shaking an event as 9/11
failed to change anything in the long term. And most films these
days seem to be little more than "sense-stimulating bombardments
designed for pacification and crude social programming."
The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/28/01
Thursday December
27
SUCCESS
ABROAD DOESN'T TRANSLATE AT HOME: India is the biggest producer
of movies in the world. But India's film industry is trying to
crack the world movie market outside India. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi
Ghum ("Sometimes Joy Sometimes Sorrow") is the most expensive
Indian film ever made. "The 400 million rupee ($8.3 million)
production made it to number three in Britain in its first week,
the highest position an Indian movie has ever reached in the British
top ten, and earned 450,000 pounds ($647,000) in the weekend ending
Dec. 16." But at home the movie is not faring well... Nando
Times (AP) 12/24/01
TOTAL
OVERREACTION 101: In the mid-90s, the satirist Christopher
Buckley penned a novel in which Big Tobacco concocted a scheme
to pay Hollywood to feature its top actors and actresses smoking
onscreen. There's no evidence that this ever actually happened,
but an astounding number of movie characters seem to be leaning
fairly heavily on the nicotine crutch these days, even as "real"
people are cutting down. One California professor is agitating
for an automatic 'R' rating for any film containing smoking. San
Francisco Chronicle 12/27/01
DIETRICH
AT 100: "Marlene Dietrich's 100th birthday is being celebrated
in Berlin, the home city of the late Hollywood star." Among
many events celebrating Germany's dark diva, "the Berlin
Film Museum is staging a special exhibition and showing never-before-seen
private films of the late star." BBC
12/27/01
Wednesday December
26
THE
NEED FOR QUALITY TV: Many critics have been predicting the
end of quality television drama. "Television’s perennial
problem, which can only worsen during an economic downturn, is
that 'formulaic' is far cheaper than 'original'." But “unless
television produces big, event pieces that cannot be seen anywhere
else, it’s just going to become an output box for movies — a worthless
piece of machinery.” The Times (UK)
12/26/01
BOOKS
ON SCREEN: "The process of turning novels into movies
is an inexact science. When it happens, it happens. Getting there,
novelists and filmmakers said, can be delicate and harrowing."
Los Angeles Times 12/26/01
Monday December
24
THE
DIGITAL MARCH: Digital art flourished in 2001, even as the
Dot-bust gained momentum. Perhaps they were motivated by the recognition
that making digital art might yield greater, if less tangible,
rewards. 'We're past the initial glow of excitement about a new
medium. Now the challenge is to take this beyond a small group
of intrepid explorers and the gee-whiz of a new technology and
into an art form that can engage a larger audience and sustain
itself in the long run'." New York
Times 12/24/01 (one-time registration
required
Friday December
21
AWARDS
SEASON GETS GOING: The Golden Globe nominations help clarify
the Oscar field. "The competition for best dramatic film
pits A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard's adaptation of the story
of a brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician, which earned six
nominations, against Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of J. R.
R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring;
Todd Field's intense In the Bedroom, about a middle- aged
couple torn apart by the murder of their son; David Lynch's nightmarish
and enigmatic Mulholland Drive; and Joel Coen's black-
and-white neo-noir The Man Who Wasn't There." The
New York Times 12/21/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
NOT TO MENTION
THE PRICE OF REAL ACTORS: Animation used to take time: each
frame was a separate work of art, and 7200 of them were needed
for a five minute film. But with computer techniques, the task
has been considerably quickened and simplified. Add to that an
audience willing to accept a less-polished look, and suddenly
there's a rush of animated films showing up on line, at festivals,
and in theaters. Wired 12/20/01
JOKE-WORTHY:
How will we know when computers can really think? One criterion
might be the ability to tell a joke. Off the evidence so far,
computers still fall short. In a recent survey of humor - 100,000
people from 69 countries - the jokes generated by computers were
far less funny than those made up by people. Then again, maybe
we just don't know what computers laugh at. The
New Scientist 12/20/01
Thursday December
20
RECORD
YEAR FOR MOVIES: Hollywood has already surpassed its
biggest grossing year - last year's record $7.7 billion.
"We're definitely going to surpass $8 billion - it's just
a matter of by how much." BBC
12/19/01
-
THE
BILLION DOLLAR CLUB: Think it was a bad year for
movies? Think again. Three Hollywood movie studies each
made more than a billion dollars this year. "Buena
Vista International, a unit of entertainment giant Walt
Disney Co has joined fellow studios Warner Bros and
Universal in hitting the coveted target, marking the
first time since 1999 that three studios have hit the
billion mark." Sydney
Morning Herald (AFP) 12/20/01
THE
EMPEROR'S NEW MOVIE: The movie Mulholland Drive was
put together with left-over bits of a rejected network TV series.
Critics across the country love it, but "their endorsement
reflects the ultimate example of intellectual hubris - the assumption
if you don't understand it, it must be brilliant. Because the
film was stitched together with less of a blueprint than Frankenstein's
monster. Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but the only real
problem with Mulholland Dr. the movie, is that due to the
way Lynch patched it together, it makes absolutely no sense."
Los Angeles Times 12/19/01
- Previously: NY
CRITICS IGNORE HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS: "In a snub to
Hollywood, the New York Film Critics Circle yesterday named
David Lynch's cryptic, arty thriller Mulholland Drive
the best movie of 2001. At the same time, In the Bedroom,
the directorial debut by actor Todd Field, snagged three prizes,
best actor (Tom Wilkinson), best actress (Sissy Spacek) and
best first film." New York Post
12/14/01
THE
NEW NEMESIS OF FRENCH FILM: "When French media mogul
Jean- Marie Messier announced he had bought the entertainment
arm of USA Networks in a multibillion-dollar deal, stock markets
cheered but the French cinema world went into mourning. Film producers
fear the deal, which gives Messier's Vivendi Universal conglomerate
a U.S. outlet for its blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park
and The Mummy, will sound the death knell for the financing
system that is the lifeblood of French film."
MSNBC 12/20/01
Wednesday December
19
NAVEL-GAZING
OF THE BEST KIND: The story couldn't be any more perfect for
Hollywood. A bitter, divisive politician gains an inordinate amount
of power in a difficult time for the nation, and draws up a list
of people who are anti-American, parading them and their supposed
wrongs in public view, ruining careers, families, and lives before
he is finally stopped by the prevailing of common sense. So why
has it taken so long for a decent movie to be made about Joe McCarthy's
blacklist? The Christian Science Monitor
12/19/01
Tuesday December
18
VALENTI'S
(NOT-SO-VEILED) THREAT: Motion picture industry lobbyist Jack
Valenti took his campaign for new forms of digital copyright protection
to a government-organized technodweeb seminar this week, warning
that if new forms of encryption are not voluntarily developed
for the predicted influx of broadband video content, he and his
pals in Congress will not hesitate to force the issue. Wired
12/18/01
DISNEY
BUYS HIGH-PLACED HELP: The Disney Company is competing with
the BBC as commercial broadcasters go head to head on new services
with the government-owned broadcaster. Now Disney has hired former
culture minister Chris Smith as a "senior consultant"
"Mr Smith's appointment comes in the run-up to the planned
launch by the BBC of two new children's digital channels, which
will be competing with Disney for an audience." BBC
12/18/01
Monday December
17
CULTURE
WIRE: All over Europe, new cultural centers devoted to digital
art are coming into being. "We want to bring digital art and its
creation to a wider audience, as well as provide a suitable base
for artists-in-residence to use the Cube as a type of personal
studio. We also want to function as a sort of creative launching-pad
for artists to explore new forms of artistic expression using
digital technologies." Wired 12/17/01
REAL
MONEY: The thing about TV reality shows is - they're cheap
to make. You have to pay actors a lot of money, while reality
TV participants get peanuts. Participants on MTV's The Real
World have been paid as little as $5000 in one-time payments
for their participation, even as the shows have found a lucrative
afterlife in reruns. Now, some of the Real Worlders are demanding
more of the pie. The New York Times
12/16/01 (one-time registration
required for access)
Sunday December
16
NOT
OKAY TO BE SMART: "In Hollywood, you can never be too
rich or too thin, but you can be too smart. It's OK to have a
beautiful face. It's not OK to have a beautiful mind. Smart people
are socially inept, inward-looking and compulsive, bedeviled by
their obsession with whatever it is that they do, be it mathematics,
piano, painting, lexicography, chess, cryptography or just general
"Jeopardy!"-like knowledgeableness. Lurking in the background
is the computer nerd. There has been a frenzy of projects featuring
such characters recently, and there's more to come."
Los Angeles Times 12/16/01
THE
PROBLEM WITH DIGITAL ART: "Galleries don't really show a lot
of new media - it's hard for them to present it. It's not like
a painting that they know how to hang. Another problem is commercial:
Many pieces aren't meant to be sold, and in any case, the market
for such works is small. Part of that is due to newness; part
is due to 'problems of the future' - like, is there tech support
for the art when things break down?" Los
Angeles Times 12/16/01
ALL
ABOUT DREAMING: The movies encourage dreaming. But "a
trio of films that ask us to dream about dreaming. Like other
recent movies – including the virtual reality universe of The
Matrix and the disorienting backward narrative of Memento – the
new dream movies look to shake up our thinking and get us to question
our perceptions of reality. They don't just feature dream sequences;
they want us to think about the process of dreaming itself. But
they also go a step further by making the connection between dream
and death." Dallas
Morning News 12/16/01
ALL
ABOUT THE SCREENWRITING... How is it that a country that could
produce Shakespeare has so few decent screenwriters? "There's
a dearth of film dramatists in this country. When you try to think
of writers to attach to projects it's very hard. You could recite
a rosary of [accomplished] British screenwriters and it wouldn't
go beyond a few... " The Guardian
(UK) 12/15/01
Friday December
14
FINALLY
- PEACE AT PACIFICA: The board of Pacifica Radio Network has
been at war with some of its long-time fans and supporters for
two years as the board tried to professionalize the operation
while listeners (and many staff) tried to preserve the network's
alternative community base. Now the factions have come to a settlement
that will return control of Pacifica's stations back to local
interests. San Francisco Chronicle
12/13/01
NY
CRITICS IGNORE HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS: "In a snub to
Hollywood, the New York Film Critics Circle yesterday named David
Lynch's cryptic, arty thriller Mulholland Drive the best
movie of 2001. At the same time, In the Bedroom, the directorial
debut by actor Todd Field, snagged three prizes, best actor (Tom
Wilkinson), best actress (Sissy Spacek) and best first film."
New York Post 12/14/01
Thursday December
13
ARTS
ON AUSSIE TV - M.I.A.: For the first time in a decade, the
Australian Broadcasting Company doesn't have an arts magazine
to broadcast in prime time. "The ABC is now asking whether
the arts-magazine format has had its day and whether a more cost-effective
and successful way to cover the arts is through documentaries
and specials." The question is whether ABC is living up to
its charter obligation to provide arts programming. The
Age (Melbourne) 12/13/01
WHO
KNEW THEY HAD A UNION? "On Wednesday, the Hollywood directors
union reached a tentative deal on a new contract, almost seven
months before the current agreement expires." Nando
Times (AP) 12/12/01
Wednesday December
12
PAYING
FOR WEBCASTING: The Canadian government is acting to stop
free re-broadcasting of TV programs over the web. "For the
first time, we're introducing creative recognition of artistic
production on the Net. 'If you want to take someone else's signal,
you'll have to pay for the creative rights. Producers and broadcasters
have to pay the actors, pay the producers, pay the news people.
This creates a level playing field between traditional forms of
transmission, satellite and cable, and the Internet."
Toronto Star 12/12/01
Monday December
10
PENALTIES
FOR FILM SUBSIDIES? US filmworkers have filed a petition with
the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Commission
"asking the government to examine the legality of Canada's
subsidies to U.S. filmmakers. It proposes tariffs be levelled
against U.S. filmmakers in the exact amount of the Canadian subsidy
they receive." Predictably, Hollywood studios oppose the
idea. Toronto Star 12/09/01
TECH
PERFORMANCE: Some internet art is evolving into performance
art. One project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music monitors "the
live activity in thousands of Internet chat rooms and message
boards, then converting these public conversations into a computer-generated
opera. The New York Times 12/08/01
(one-time registration required for access)
Sunday December
9
THE
POWER BEHIND THE AWARDS: We're getting into movie critic awards
season. Though they're not as widely recognized by the general
public, critics associations have enormous influence. "Film
reviewers' organizations abound, but only three really rate in
Hollywood: New York, L.A. and the overall National Society of
Film Critics. These media prizes may be widely esteemed, insomnia-inducing
and even copied by the Oscars, but they also have a scandalous
history. The voting conclaves are so mysterious - and regarded
by many as being so sacred - that it may seem as if the critics
are powwowing to pick a pope, but in fact their secret antics
can be quite devilish." Los Angeles
Times 12/09/01
LOWLY
SCREENWRITERS REGAIN THEIR LOWLY PLACE: For a brief time in
the mid-90s, screenwriters were pulling in multi-million-dollar
contracts for scripts they hadn't even written yet. But after
some high-profile flops, "screenwriters are back to being the
bastard children of Hollywood. There was a bit of a backlash to
all the big screenplay deals in the late 80's and early 90's.
We're paying for it now." The New
York Times 12/09/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Friday December
7
ONE
BILLION SERVED: "It is estimated that by the end of its
cinema release more than one billion children will have seen Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This is on top of the those
who have read the books, which thus far have sold more than 160
million copies throughout the world." The
Age (Melbourne) 12/08/01
Thursday December
6
TARGETING
KIDS: Last year, the Federal Trade Commission reported that
adult-rated movies, records, and electronic games were being marketed
to children. This year, the FTC reports some improvement. "The
movie and video game industries have largely stopped the direct
targeting of adult-rated materials to children. The bad news is
that the music industry has done little if anything to curb the
marketing of inappropriate records to kids, or to provide parents
with better information about lyrical content." Boston Globe 12/06/01
TRAILER
TRASH: Is there a growing backlash against the pile-up of
movie trailers theatres are forcing audiences to watch before
the main attraction this holiday season? "Now, most moviegoers
enjoy a trailer or two. But the half-dozen or more they get during
the holiday season, when the studios trumpet new pictures, strikes
some as too much of a good thing. Traffic in movie trailers has
reached gridlock proportions." Philadelphia
Inquirer 12/06/01
OR
MAYBE THE SHOWS THEMSELVES ARE DUMB: Weakest Link and
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire are still on the air - barely.
"Viewers who once tuned in to watch ordinary people compete
for big bucks are tuning out at the first glimpse of another tiresome
group of pseudo-celebs - who have included everyone from grown-up
Brady Bunch kids to Playboy Playmates. What ordinary people
learn most often when celebrities take over a quiz show is that
some celebrities are as dumb as fence posts." New
York Post 12/06/01
Wednesday December
5
WALT'S
CENTENARY: "Hollywood is celebrating the life and career
of one of entertainment's most influential figures. Walt Disney,
who would have been 100 years old on Wednesday, played a pivotal
role in developing family entertainment - most significantly as
a pioneering animator. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, the organisation which stages the Oscars, is presenting
a special tribute at its Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills."
BBC 12/05/01
-
HATING
DISNEY: What could be more American than the love of that
creator of Snow White, that father of The Mouse, that delighter
of children worldwise, Walter E. Disney? Um, despising him,
actually. Washington Post 12/05/01
Monday December
3
TOLKIEN
FAMILY DISPUTE: A dispute over the soon-to-be-released Lord
of the Rings movie has split members of the Tolkien family.
"J. R. R. Tolkien signed away the film rights to The Lord
of the Rings for just £10,000 in 1968, five years before his
death at the age of 81." New
Zealand Herald 12/03/01
Sunday December
2
THE
PROBLEM WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS: The movie Fat Girl
has been banned in Ontario because it violates "community
standards." Of all the reasons to ban something, this kis
the most idiotic. "Quite simply, there is no community. There
are thousands of communities. And there is no reason for the most
conservative and least sophisticated of those communities to impose
their standards - to impose what amounts, at root, to taste -
on my community. Just as my community doesn't force other communities
to watch French art films." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/01
THE
NEW FACE OF ART FILMS: "A new kind of art house movie
has come to town, a distinctive type of picture with its own audience
that exists alongside traditional (and still very much admired)
fare, but is as different from it as chalk proverbially is from
cheese. Several qualities, at times together, at times standing
alone, typify these new kinds of films. But it's what they lack
that defines them: Let's call these features, for shorthand's
sake, heartless art films. It's the new face of alternative cinema,
so we'd better get used to it." Los
Angeles Times 12/02/01
THE
NEXT DISNEY? John Lasseter, the animation wiz behind Toy Story
is being called the Walt Disney of the 21st Century. "He
gives the impression of being a sane man who has, until recently,
been considered crazy. 'In order to work in animation, part of
you has to be a child that's never grown up."
The Telegraph (UK) 12/01/01
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