TMZ's New Status Post-Michael Jackson - A Smarter Media Model? "The scoops, and subsequent red-framed 'exclusives' about Jackson's tangled personal and professional affairs, have brought not only massive attention to the site but also a journalistic reassessment as well. The question is: Did TMZ just get lucky with its Jackson coverage -- a right-place, right-time lightning strike -- or has TMZ built a smarter new-media organization that could teach the rest of the pack how to get it done?"

Washington Post 07/03/09

email this story | Posted 07/03/09@05:29AM

What Happened To Movie Music? Will anyone be fighting over any of today's crop of movie songs 60 years from now? "Lose Yourself" -- Eminem's Best Original Song winner of 2002 -- should be so lucky.

The Wall Street Journal 07/03/09

email this story | Posted 07/03/09@04:42AM

Thirteen (Or So) Ways Of Looking At A Hollywood Knock-Off Of An '80s Video Game "Universal has acquired the movie rights to Asteroids, the bleeping, blooping 1979 video game in which crude line drawings were used to represent rocket ships and gigantic space rocks. Before the motion picture industry sinks millions of dollars into the project, we'll save it the trouble by imagining how Asteroids would be made into a film by directors like …" (Be sure to check out the reader comments.)

New York Times 07/02/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@09:00PM

NYC's Film & TV Tax-Credit Fund Runs Out Of Money "New York City has exhausted its budget for tax incentives for film and TV productions as of Tuesday, city officials announced.... 'New York City's "Made in NY" tax credit for qualified film and television production -- the only one of its kind administered by a city in the U.S. -- has reached its full allocation of $192.5 million and funds are no longer available for new applications,' the NYC Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting said."

Hollywood Reporter 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@08:21AM

Bad Economy Means Good Times For Public Service Ads "[S]upport for public service campaigns is usually stronger during economic downturns because media companies often prefer to run classy-looking, altruistic ads to fill space and time rather than sell that inventory to dodgy marketers whose ads may be cheesy, misleading or deceptive." In 2008, particularly in the fourth quarter, the number of public service ads rose significantly over 2007 -- and the trend is continuing.

The New York Times 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/02/09@05:21AM

Project  Runway  Gallery: Art Gets The Reality TV Treatment "In the series [on the Bravo cable network], 13 contestants will compete for a gallery exhibition, a cash prize and a sponsored national tour. The artists will create works in the fields of sculpture, painting, photography, industrial design and more. Their completed works will be judged by a panel of art world figures including gallerists, collectors, curators, critics and fellow artists. The finalists' work will be featured in a nationwide museum tour."

Los Angeles Times 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@09:29PM

Fired Over Wolverine Review, Columnist Sues For $5 Million "Gossip columnist Roger Friedman wants more than $5 million in lost wages and damages from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for firing him after he reviewed the company's 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' based on a pirated copy of the movie. In a suit filed in New York State Supreme Court on Monday, Friedman says he was fired from his $250,000-a-year job (no, that's not a typo) as a columnist and contributor to Fox News illegally."

Los Angeles Times 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@06:41AM

When Film Producers Want Your School For A Set "Los Angeles Unified schools made $1.756 million last year from filming, led by the 48 days at Birmingham High in Van Nuys, 47 days at University High in West Los Angeles and 34 days at Le Conte Middle School in Hollywood, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit that coordinates on-location permits for the city and much of Los Angeles County. ... But El Segundo High holds a special place in the hearts of filmmakers," whose frequent presence in the area is angering the neighbors.

Los Angeles Times 06/30/09

email this story | Posted 07/01/09@06:26AM

Always Look On The Bright Side: The Life Of Brian, No Longer Banned In Glasgow "When [the Monty Python film] was released 30 years ago it was described as a motion picture destined to offend nearly two-thirds of the civilised world and severely annoy the other third. In 1980, Glasgow councillors agreed and refused to allow it the 15 certificate agreed by the British Board of Film Censors. Instead they insisted it could only be shown as an X-rated adult movie, resulting in it never being screened in the city."

The Herald (Glasgow) 07/01/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@09:23PM

Could Time Delay On Aggregation Save Newspapers? Maybe the answer to newspapers' ills isn't a new business model. Maybe it's as straightforward as rewriting copyright law. First Amendment lawyer David Marburger and his economics professor brother, Daniel, "propose changing federal copyright law to give the original newsgatherer a period -- they'd like it to be 24 hours -- in which the news item would be available only on the originator's Web site. "

Editor & Publisher 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@07:19AM

TV Is Giddy For Twitter, Its Latest Tech Crush "The E! channel streams a feed of celebrity tweets across the lower third of its screen, while some CNN newscasters have practically made Twitter their co-anchor. Over at MTV, the new show It's On with Alexa Chung allows viewers to type a message in Twitter and watch it appear on their living-room sets." This despite the fact that "relatively recent history is littered with futile attempts to integrate television with the latest technological fad."

NPR 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@06:15AM

New-Media 'News': Do We Know What We Think We Know? "Has technology's ability to deliver information at such a rapid pace corrupted us? It's one thing to marvel at how social media sites have helped spread Iranian news we might not have attained due to censorship -- and with such timeliness; it's quite another to have become a culture that prizes speed over confirmed facts. Have our standards for accountability dissolved?"

Los Angeles Times 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/30/09@06:04AM

What's Behind The Susan Boyle Phenomenon "What was the Susan Boyle spectacle, that chunk of culture that held us, for days at least, so firmly rapt? The answers still lie in the video, a small, insidious masterpiece that really should be watched several times for its accidental commentary on popular misery, the concept of 'expectation' and how cultures congratulate themselves."

New York Times Magazine 06/28/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@04:45AM

The Summer Hollywood's A-List Stars Failed To Sell The Movies "Hollywood's movie studios, hopeful that marquee-name actors would push their summer box-office receipts to record levels, are finding that the heavyweights aren't winning over audiences like they used to. With all but a couple of big-budget films already opened, the summer of 2009 is shaping up to be one of the worst on record for Hollywood's A-list talent."

Los Angeles Times 06/29/09

email this story | Posted 06/29/09@04:04AM

Team Wins $1 Million Netflix Challenge "Two front runners in the contest, Team Pragmatic Theory and Team Bellkor in Chaos, joined forces and submitted an algorithm that was 10.05 percent better than the one Netflix uses to recommend movies to its subscribers. The result was published on the Netflix Prize leader board on Friday."

Wired 06/27/09

email this story | Posted 06/28/09@01:18PM

BBC Dominates TV Drama - Is This Healthy? "Why not include ITV and Channel 4 drama within the definition of public-service broadcasting - because at the moment the BBC is heading towards a virtual monopoly of drama production."

The Independent (UK) 06/27/09

email this story | Posted 06/28/09@07:50AM

Michael Jackson News Doubles Twitter Use, Triples Facebook's "On Twitter, the volume of Jackson-related messages - up to 5,000 per minute at peak - put such a demand on the site that it slowed considerably."

Los Angeles Times 06/26/09

email this story | Posted 06/26/09@05:49AM

'What's A Poor Newscaster To Do?' The Problems Of Eulogizing Michael Jackson On Television "How does one eulogize a superstar who, even without the various accusations of pedophilia, was something of a freak? Or was, as several talking heads put it, 'a troubled individual.' … It all made the standard news loop eulogy a little … complicated."

Los Angeles Times 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@09:49PM

BBC To Reveal Pay And Expenses Of 100 Top Execs Presumably in response to the MP expenses scandal, "The BBC is to … publish an exact breakdown of pay, by name, of the top 50 earners in BBC management and the [50] top decision makers - a group that he said has yet to be defined precisely - within the organisation."

The Stage (UK) 06/25/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@09:44PM

WSJ Publisher: Vampire Google Sucks Newspapers' Blood "The gloves are coming off in the intensifying battle between newspaper publishers and Google. In a keynote speech at the annual PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Outlook event Tuesday, Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton raised the rhetoric a notch, calling the Internet search giant a vampire 'sucking the blood' out of the newspaper business, and promised that new developments would level the playing field."

Crain's New York Business 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/25/09@05:33AM

Academy Expands Best Picture Oscar To Ten Nominees "Having 10 best picture nominees is going [to] allow academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," said the Academy's president. Having ten nominees in the category was the standard between 1932 and 1943.

Los Angeles Times 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@09:51PM

'Hollywood's Version Of A Stimulus Package' "First there's the number of people who watch the Oscars themselves. The Academy's thinking: The more blockbuster films that are nominated, the more people will watch." Then there's the box office: "Best picture nominees simply make more money. So the more best picture nominees, the more films moviegoers think they're supposed to see to stay hip with the cultural conversation." And think of what all the extra ad revenue will do for journalism …

The Big Money 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@09:49PM

Do The Right Thing, 20 Years On "The film's fiery conclusion, with the Italian-American Sal's Famous Pizzeria going up in flames after the police murder of Radio Raheem, was the perfect denouement, a catharsis for every slight at the hands of white people. […] Watching it this time around, I found myself wishing to the very end of the film that the inevitable wouldn't happen, that Sal's pizzeria would not go up in flames at the hands of a black mob."

The Root 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@09:30PM

Spike Lee And His Woman Problem "[W]hen it comes to his female characters, it's as though Lee can't decide whether to worship them or punish them. […] Lee's latent misogyny stings because, from the very beginning, his was the voice of the black hipster intellectual … You expect a little more enlightenment from him than you would from, say, Ice Cube or from Tyler Perry with his scheming evil buppies."

The Root 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@09:29PM

Hollywood's Next Big Thing: Board-Game Adaptations "It might seem like trying to turn board games into event movies is the height of creative laziness. Actually, Land of the Lost is the height of creative laziness. But there might be some rationality to the board game idea."

NPR 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@07:28AM

UK Film-Rating Board Tightens Rules On Language, Sex "Rachel from Friends, as seemingly inoffensive as any sitcom character can be, has cost the latest box set of the series a PG rating under new, tighter age guidelines announced yesterday. ... Although the [British Board of Film Classification] described the revised guidelines last night as 'a tweak', nonetheless they will subtly alter the nation's viewing habits. They always do."

The Times (UK) 06/24/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@06:35AM

Every Movie Has At Least Two Versions "Nowadays, when somebody says, 'I've just seen a movie,' we don't necessarily know whether the speaker saw it in a theater or on a mobile phone, alone or with a thousand other people, on celluloid or on a disc. These aren't really the same experiences, even if we choose to call them all The Godfather or Up. And when it comes to distinguishing between film history and advertising, we may be even more confused."

Slate 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/24/09@05:23AM

Hollywood's Most Notorious News Blog (No, Not Perez Hilton) Gets Acquired "Nikki Finke, the sharp-tongued Hollywood blogger, is having her payday. Her Web site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, has been acquired by the Mail.com Media Corporation for an undisclosed amount." That amount is rumored to be well over $1 million, not including continuing payment for Finke's services as the site's editor.

New York Times 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@09:51PM

Zhang Yimou Shooting Chinese Remake Of Blood Simple "Filming on the Chinese-language film San Qiang Pai An Jing Qi - which roughly translates as 'The Stunning Case of the Three Gun Shots' - kicked off on June 9." The project is "the Chinese director's first film since designing the opening and closing ceremonies of last year's Beijing Olympics."

AP 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@09:44PM

Toronto Fest 2009 To Feature New City Series Plus Resnais And Oliveira Premieres "Organizers of this year's Toronto International Film Festival made their first programming announcement of the year on Tuesday," with the programme including North American premieres by 101-year-old Manoel de Oliveira and Alain Resnais. In addition, the TIFF is launching a new sidebar: "City to City. The programme will examine the changing landscape of one featured metropolis each year by showcasing films from and about the chosen city. … Tel Aviv, which is celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, was selected for the inaugural edition."

CBC 06/23/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@09:31PM

FTC Trains Its Sights On Bloggers Who Write About Swag "Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. ... The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers -- as well as the companies that compensate them -- for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest."

Associated Press 06/22/09

email this story | Posted 06/23/09@07:09AM

Iranian Films Foreshadowed Cultural Revolution The flowering of Iranian cinema in the 1990s was itself evidence of a cultural and political thaw, a tentative premonition of the current demand for change.

The New York Times 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/22/09@08:22AM

How We Will See Movies In The Future "Individual films will be made available in multiple ways, either consecutively or all at the same time. (Just because a film is available free on SnagFilms or Hulu, it doesn't follow that no one wants the convenience of renting it from iTunes or Amazon.) In fact, the best sites here accept Internet permeability as a given, and operate on the principle that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Salon 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@06:02PM

Vision: 3D London Olympics On Every Movie Screen It should be possible to show the London Olympics "every single day in 3D on every screen in the country. 3D sport, said Lord Puttnam, could be a "real game changer" that could put cinemas "at the heart of digital Britain".

BBC 06/21/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@09:27AM

Talent Managers Face Big Changes As Management Biz Reorganizes "While the industry has been abuzz during recent weeks about consolidation in the agency business, less discussed is the effect these changes are having on a management community that has grown exponentially during the past decade but faces the same industrywide slowdown in job opportunities."

Backstage 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/21/09@09:21AM

Report: YouTube Is Losing Less Money Than Previously Reported A new report argues that YouTube is "losing far less than the widely cited $470 million per year" and says "the site's losses this year will be a much more narrow $174.2 million." So why isn't Google trumpeting the success? "Any appearance of profits leads to more draconian revenue share demands from partners and additional lawsuits from owners of unlicensed content."

Los Angeles Times 06/19/09

email this story | Posted 06/19/09@07:40AM

In Guy Season At Multiplex, Some Studios Bet On Women "The studios hold competing theories over whether a surfeit of male-oriented movies helps drum up even greater interest in films for women. One camp says good movies will work regardless of what the competitive landscape looks like, while the other maintains that moviegoers (like nature) abhor a vacuum, that too many macho movies make romance, comedy and sobbing even more desirable."

Los Angeles Times 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@06:46AM

Japan Toughens Copyright Law (If Not Scofflaws' Penalties) "The Japanese parliament has passed an amendment to the existing Copyright Law that extends further protections to copyright holders and, for the first time, makes it illegal for private users to download copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the rights holders' permission. The new statute will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010[,] but contains several caveats that raise the question of how it will be enforced." (Scroll down.)

Billboard.biz 06/16/09

email this story | Posted 06/18/09@06:13AM

Hollywood's Top Prop Shop Closes Down "[Harvey] Schwartz, the owner of 20th Century Props, plans to go out of business next month and auction the inventory. Battered by the surge in out-of-state movie production and the demise of scripted programming on network television, the once-thriving business - one of a handful of its type remaining - is failing."

New York Times 06/18/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@09:44PM

American Film Institute And Dallas Festival End Partnership "After a three year partnership, the American Film Institute and the Dallas Film Society have decided to part ways. The Dallas Film Society announced Wednesday that it would not be renewing its licensing agreement with AFI, which it began in 2006."

KERA (Dallas) 06/17/09

email this story | Posted 06/17/09@09:34PM