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Latest Protester of Comcast - NBC Deal Plays Race Card and Has Ex-FCC Chairman on Board
Source:
Michael Ricci
A recently formed advocacy group has some pretty harsh words for cable giant Comcast Corp. and has hired a former FCC chairman as its counsel. “For decades Comcast has shut the door to African American ownership of cable channels," said Stanley E. Washington, president and chief executive of the National Coalition of African American Owned Media. He even charged Comcast investors with “supporting apartheid right here in America." The coalition, which appears to be a relatively new group, says its ...
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The Restoration Of 'Metropolis'
Source:
Michael Ricci
It's often been said that silent films are a lost art twice over. Not only are movies without sound not being made anymore, but many of the classics of the period also no longer physically exist. That, however, is not the end of the story. For what's less well known is that pictures long thought to be lost forever, key works unseen for decades, have a remarkable tendency to regularly turn up in ways as exciting and dramatic as the ...
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Popularity of 3-D is Affecting How Screenplays Are Written
Source:
Michael Ricci
When Matt Pitts, a writer on “Fringe" and a former assistant to J.J. Abrams, recently began shopping his first film script to movie studios, he knew he had a marketable idea on his hands.
The title of his screenplay, after all, was “ Spring Break Zombie Cruise" and its storyline followed, well, just that. But the prospect of flesh-eating creatures stalking beautiful young bodies wasn't his script's main hook. The element to catch a studio mogul's eye? A plan to ...
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Uplifting 'Treme' Has Potential to Surpass 'Wire'
Source:
All About Jazz
Hurricane Katrina was a devastating, depressing debacle whose ramifications are still felt today. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed. You'd think “Treme," a new HBO series that takes place in New Orleans in the months after Katrina, would be a downer, that viewers would be treated to a humbling, depressing television experience. You'd be wrong. “Treme," through two episodes, is among the most uplifting TV series I've ever seen. This is one reason why Treme has the potential to be ...
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Top Scribes Reap Pic Rewrite Riches
Source:
All About Jazz
Once upon a time, the ultimate Hollywood ambition was to direct. Nowadays, clients are more likely to tell their reps: “What I really want to do is polish scripts." For Hollywood's dozen or so top-tier script doctors, that means commanding $250,000- $300,000 a week, being booked months in advance and keeping their efforts largely cloaked in anonymity. Script rewrites have been part of the filmmaking process since the days when Irving Thalberg kept a stable of scribes competing for his ...
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3-D Hollywoods Latest Hot Trend
Source:
Michael Ricci
On a recent afternoon, a dozen cinematographers, directors and camera assistants huddled inside a sound stage on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, wearing black plastic glasses as they watched a monitor. The object of their gaze: the body movements of a USC acting student sitting at a kitchen table on a set a few yards away. “Hold up one finger,” bellowed the instructor, cinematographer David Drzewiecki. The student obliged as a technician several yards away used a remote-control ...
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Furious Exchange on Futures Trading
Source:
All About Jazz
Proponents of two proposed film futures exchanges defended their proposals on Capitol Hill Thursday amid an increasingly onerous political environment and skepticism among lawmakers about the viability of trading in weekend box office receipts.
But the teams behind the exchanges got a boost from an endorsement by Lionsgate's vice chairman Michael Burns, who argued in a letter to a House Agriculture subcommittee that the market in domestic box office receipts “would substantially widen the number and breadth of financing sources ...
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Muslim Extremist Can't Take a Joke, Post Death Threats Against "South Park" Creators
Source:
Michael Ricci
Threat against South Park creators highlights dilemma for media companies. Comedy Central bleeped out all references to the prophet Muhammad in the show after he was depicted dressed as a bear. The shows creators disagreed strongly with the decision. In its 200 shows, the irreverent animated program “South Park" has mercilessly satirized Christianity, Buddhism, Scientology, the blind and disabled, gay people, Hollywood celebrities and politicians of all persuasions, weathering the resulting protests and threats of boycotts. But this week, after ...
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