Recently in Media Category

This is one of Mr. Olbermann's occasional "special comments" from his week-nightly program Countdown with Keith Olbermann and you need to watch it. It aired yesterday and it's brilliant. It's truth spoken to power (albeit indirectly) like it is rarely seen on television in the United States (or anywhere else, for that matter) and it is genius. It's a bit long (12 minutes) but completely worth it. If you're even a little bit like I am, it will have you clapping, laughing, scowling and whooping at the ceiling. It's the news commentator's version of a beautiful jazz riff. It's goes, man! You just wish you were in the corner of a dark and smokey Greenwich Village bar, yelling "Go man, GO!" at the top of your lungs.

Yes, it's that good.

And while you're at it, if you like this, send an email to letters@msnbc.com and tell them that even if the barbarian hordes of the FCC, the GOP or Cheney himself descend on 30 Rock, the truth must be told and Keith must remain on the air.

So BMW of Canada recently ran a rather innovative ad campaign on the cover of Vice magazine, using a technique that displays a glow-in-the-dark ad when for the BMW 1 series when the lights go out. This is pretty cool, actually. According to mediaincanada.com, Vice had to print the covers at a plant, ship them to somewhere else to add the ad and UV coat them, then ship them back to the original plant for binding to the rest of the issue. Wow. One very interesting aside...do you think BMW knew that the cover model on this issue of Vice was porn uber-star Sasha Grey?

On Monday evening The Hollywood Reporter (THR) blew off an industry standard embargo and ran the South by Southwest Film Festival & Conference lineup story a day early. According to SXSW fest producer Matt Dentler, the release was embargoed until Tuesday afternoon. I don't want to get into a big snit about this, but it's kinda fucked up. Embargoes are, for lack of a better word, understandings among the trades. They work both ways and when one publication ignores them, they all get hurt.

Not only is ignoring embargoes dishonest but given the various friendships and relationships that abound in this industry (between film festival directors, trade publications, distribution companies, etc.) it's also risky. It's a slippery slope and with the advent of the Internet and instant news, "traditional" Hollywood trades Variety and THR no longer have the stranglehold on news and info they once had. Sure, they can still strong arm certain people or companies into giving them exclusives, but their influence is waning.

I don't mean to claim that Variety and THR are not still valid sources of intelligent news reporting, festival coverage and reviews, that would be absurd. They are still the dual 800 lb. gorillas in the room. That said, I do think that the days of the entire film industry, studios and indies alike, having to kowtow to the "big two" are over. Sure, we can all get along if we all agree to abide by standard rules but if a "free for all" attitude prevails, there's no longer any guarantee that Variety and THR still have the strangle hold over the news as they have in days past. For any one "trade" paper to break these mutually agreed upon rules is harmful to the whole.

That said, check out these stories on SXSW's exceptional lineup. I will be writing more about the films (and music) at this essential fest in the days and weeks to come.

So the majority of the year end awards have come and gone and since I haven't been keeping a running tally (I really should have been) I'm gonna give big ups to Movie City News for their obscenely comprehensive awards section. The thing is, the damn site's so comprehensive (The top 10 from the UC Gauntlet's Ryan Pike....300 at #6 and Transformers at #10? Really dude?) that anyone could pick and choose from the info and shape it to illustrate almost anything....except that 300 is the sixth best film of the year.

While it's clear that no single critics group can predict the Oscars (assuming they are the ne plus ultra of awards "season") some front runners are emerging in the race to fill out the nomination fields. The last to present their awards, the Oscars are still the "big show" and despite attempts by the Independent Spirit Awards and Golden Globes to chip away at their luster, one is always drawn back to what Roger Avary said when accepting his Spirit Award for co-writing Pulp Fiction (and I may be paraphrasing, here...I was pretty drunk at the time): "This is really nice.... it won't fit up my butt as well as an Oscar, though." I can't think of a cruder way to put it, but yes, winning an Oscar is largely considered to be better, in every way, than winning a Spirit Award or Golden Globe.

As for the Globes, in nominating 12 films between their two best picture categories, they've proven themselves to be even more of a farce than in years past. Why not 14? Couldn't they find 7 musical/comedy films that "rated?" Speaking of the Musical/Comedy category, how is La Vie en Rose a musical? If every film that had music in it was considered a musical... And then there's the oddity of Persepolis. So the acclaimed Sony Pictures Classics release was good enough to be nominated for best foreign-language film, but not as best animated feature? So Bee Movie is a better film? (NOTE: I read somewhere that films can only be nominated for one "Best" category at the Globes, but can't confirm this, because the Globs don't seem to post their voting rules on their site). And whither The Counterfeiters? In my not-so-humble opinion, this film is clearly one of the best five foreign language films of the year, but it's getting no love from critics groups and very little press attention, possibly because Sony Classics isn't releasing it until next year. Will this affect its chances at the Academy Awards? I hope not, because it's an exceptional piece of work.

An article on the front page of today's print edition of the New York Times entitled: "Rebel Unity Is Scarce at the Darfur Talks in Libya" has the following photograph accompanied by the caption: "A Darfur rebel took in the buffet lunch at his hotel in Sirte, Libya. Many rebel leaders did not show up for talks called in an effort to end the bloody conflict in Sudan."

Photo by Jehad Nga for The New York Times, © The New York Times

Hmmmm, didn't show up, you say? Well, were they told that there'd be cake? I find cake is often an incentive to gather warring factions all in one room.

I also find that a picture of starving, brutalized people is a far more effective means of getting the message of genocide out than a picture of a rebel in a tracksuit eating more than most people in his country get in a year.

Photo from Wondering of a Wanderer

Just a thought.

The film blogosphere is abuzz today with the news that legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has passed away at the age of 89 and rightly so. I have to admit that I don't have much to add. I am hardly an expert on the man and his work, though I do tend to use him as proof that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a much cooler show than some people give it credit, to wit: In an episode where Buffy was going up against a monster that might possibly be Death itself, her friend Xander remarks: "And if he asks you to play chess, don't. The guy's, like, a whiz." Get it?

No, I'd rather post a little bit about Tom Snyder who passed away on Sunday at the age of 71, due to complications from Leukemia. A newsman and raconteur, Snyder loved the broadcast business and was a news anchor, correspondent and most famously, a talk show host on both NBC and later, CBS. From 1972-1983 he was the host of Tomorrow, which aired after The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This was a legendary show in which the unapologetically un-hip Snyder interviewed everyone from Muhammad Ali to Howard Cosell to Charles Manson to, in one excruciating interview, a petulant John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten). U2's first appearance on American TV was on Tomorrow, as was John Lennon's last TV interview. Constantly surrounded by cigarette smoke and reveling in his deep-throated laugh, Tom was unlike anyone else on the tube.

Here's a great tribute segment with clips from Elton John, Cosell, Ali and others.

Over on his blog, Eugene Hernandez has posted about Variety's pre-release of the winners of the recently concluded Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF), writing that his RSS reader had tipped him off "to a Variety story announcing the winners. Posted at 5:40 p.m. PT, the 109 word item named the two Target award winners nearly 3 hours before the filmmakers (and ceremony attendees) would find out."

This stinks on several levels.

Tipping filmmakers off to awards results before the ceremony takes place is in my opinion a high crime in our little circle of the universe. Several years ago I was at the awards ceremony of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, seated next to a competition filmmaker waiting for the awards to start when a journalist (we had all received the press release, but most of us kept our mouths shut) walked up to him and asked: "How does it feel to win the award?" The filmmaker, Pawel Pawlikowski who was attending with his wonderful film Last Resort, was confused and then slowly deflated as his excitement at winning $35,000 was somewhat dulled by someone's insensitivity. His joy was further diminished when before I could shut her up, the woman let it slip that his two leads had also won prizes. Had he not been a winner, it would have been even worse.

On another level, this portends badly for the future of our business. Where I or another blogger to blow off customarily agreed to rules like embargoes, we'd at the least get slapped on the wrist by being banned from an event or two or refused credentials. However, when a publication of the size and influence of Variety does it, what's the festival going to do? Ban Variety from covering its events?

And now, the latest entry from No Fucking Shit University, a headline from CNN.com: Report links global warming to humans

PARIS, France (AP) -- The world's leading climate scientists, in their most powerful language ever used on the issue, said global warming is "very likely" man-made, according to a new report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"We have come to heat your planet!"

As of today, the IMDb (finally) removed the "adult" tag from Shortbus and the film now turns up in regular searches. This hardly addresses the main issue of the IMDb's policy towards films they label as "adult." This policy is at best, misguided and at worse, flat out censorship.

God, I love the bloggosphere! If it wasn't for Eugene's post (and for Jay Brannan's You Tube video), I wouldn't have known about the IMDb's practice of censoring searches and wouldn't have written about it and so on and so on....

Isn't it nice when something that makes you angry (happy, aroused, sad, etc.) affects other people, as well? And then they go and write about it, too? Well, it seems like the IMDb story regarding Shortbus and other films has some serious legs, after all. Here are some news sources that picked up on my little post and ran with it:

indieWIRE.com
Dig it! I've been Fleshbotted!
Boingboing!
Cinema Blend
Comstock Films
Matchcut.org's boards
The Alien Experience boards
Other aggregators who have picked up the story include News Is Free

More to come?

So on Friday afternoon I checked my "My Yahoo" home page. In the "Y! Entertainment Industry News" section, there were three headlines, as per usual. The second one was:
"Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra Names 2007 Officers"

Really? That's the #2 news story in the Entertainment Industry accoridng to Y! News?

According to CNN....Britney Spears has shed 180 pounds of dead weight, filing for divorce from K-Fed. Ummmm, Kevin...your 15 minutes are up....

According to CNN (via Reuters), Canadian troops "stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy." A huge forest of 10' tall marijuana plants. Apparently the Taliban have been using the forests as cover, and according to General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, marijuana plants absorb heat energy (who knew!?), making it very difficult to find pesky Taliban fighters hiding in amongst the plants.

Making it even worse, the plants are so saturated with water right now, than burning them isn't working, even though the Canadians have tried using white phosphorous and diesel. Here's where this gets funny.

Apparently a few brown plans on the edge of the forest did indeed catch fire, much to the "discomfort" of some soldiers caught downwind of the, uh, conflagration. Apparently the troops "had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," according to General Hiller.

So with this in mind, a couple of illustrations of the subject. First, Tom Paxton's Late '60's/early '70's take on soldiers and, oh, pot, Talking Vietnam Pot Luck Blues:

We are officially a culturally bankrupt society when this is news:

Hilton, Richie Seen at L.A. Steakhouse

Ok, ever since there have been celebrities, a part of the media has been dedicated to covering their exploits and that's fine. They're famous and a part of the general public likes reading about famous people. That said, these two no-talent stick figures are famous for being, basically, blithering idiots. Still they're famous, so some sites like TMZ.com and TheSuperficial.com (which I confess to perusing from time to time in order to slake my thirst for celebs doing stupid shit) but really, what the FUCK is the New York Times doing running this shit on thier site? I mean, do they have to run everything the AP files?

Excuse me. I need to go wash my eyeballs out from reading this shit.

Pitt on Marriage, from the October, 2006 issue of Esquire:

Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.

Click through to the above link. There are plenty of other insightful and intelligent things to read from Mr. Pitt.