Posted Dec 27th 2006 7:14PM by
Filed under: ,
The apple may not fall far from the tree, but Apple's share price nearly fell out of the tree today, six percent before rebounding.
Well, the stock options that's engulfed so many Wall Street companies has also come to Apple.
An unconfirmed, published report in a law journal today said, to quote , that "federal prosecutors are reviewing the computer maker's stock-option administration documents to see if they were intentionally falsified by company officials."
Among those officials under particular scrutiny are Apple founder and black turtleneck-wearer-in-chief, Steve Jobs.
And an Apple without Jobs? It clearly makes investors very nervous. As Wired points out, Steve's had a .
But it also begs the question, as MarketWatch editor-in-chief David Callaway ,
"Are the [Apple] shares, having tripled in the last two years on the power of the iPod revolution, still reflecting the phenomenal growth story of a reinvented company that changed the music industry like it did the computer industry 30 years ago? Or are they hanging by a thread on the future of a hard-charging, arrogant leader who could blow up at any time? .
.. The answer depends on whether you believe Steve Jobs is Rupert Murdoch or Frank Perdue.
"
That is, is he a builder of media empires, or simply a pitchman who's become inseparable from his product -- like the lamentably late Frank -- you know: "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."?
We thought we'd put the question to you, dear readers: What is Apple without its mercurial, visionary founder?
Vote and tell us what you think...
Posted Dec 20th 2006 7:33PM by
The misleadingly tame headline in today's Daily Variety is about as yawn-inducing as they come, up there with chestnuts like "Governor Appoints Committee to Study Problem."
What was it?
"Sony BMG to Pay Fines."
But the implications are pretty hefty if you bought music of any kind in any quantity.
As Variety's Phil Gallo in one of the most succinct, clever leads of the year, "In the land of ones and zeroes, it's consumers 1, Sony BMG 0.
"
Explains Gallo: "The music giant agreed Tuesday to cease embedding compact discs with digital rights management software that limited the number of copies consumers can make of the music and harmed the computers of some consumers...
Under the settlement, Sony BMG will provide refunds of up to $175 to California consumers, who will have 180 days to file a refund claim via a form available on Sony BMG's Web site and must include a description of the harm and documentation of repair expenses."
So, Christmas comes a little early, kids. If you bought a CD from Arista, Columbia, Epic or RCA Records, guess what?
It's probably free.
If you think I am indulging a little too much schadenfreude, think about how little honesty Sony Music has about its marketing practices.
Per The Motley Fool, Sony this week operating a fake blog, or "flog.
" The flog was a video blog that appeared to have been made by an amateur MC named 'Charlie,' one called "alliwantforxmasisapsp.com." Charlie, the flog insists, owns a PSP and has a pal who craves one too.
Sony is amazing; I once caught them a few years ago with their movie division. They were pressing their own minority employees to appear in testimonial TV ads for Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" -- a film in which American slaves were made to appear as cheerful independent contractors, rather than humiliated chattel.
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Posted Dec 20th 2006 7:20PM by
News today that John Lennon's final FBI files have been released and has made headlines around the world.
The "big" revelation?
Lennon promised to help "finance the establishment of a left wing bookshop and reading room in London.
"
Yeah, definitely a rationale for surveillance, that. Among all the hype, it's my favorite, bed-wetting, pinko-commie, tree-hugging magazine, The Nation, which gets it most right when it comes to the long-haired leftie Lennon.
Frequent The Nation Lennonologist Jon Wiener :
"Why did four administrations fight in court to prevent the release of information that was already public?
Why did it take twenty-three years of litigation by the ACLU of Southern California (and attorney Dan Marmalefsky of Morrison Foerster, working pro bono) to get the government to concede that these weren't national security secrets, and that releasing them would not cause "foreign military retaliation"? The answer, I think, has nothing to do with John Lennon. It has everything to do with the FBI and the Justice Department, and what they see as the principle they are defending: that they alone should define what constitutes a national security secret.
They argued repeatedly in this case that the courts should defer to the FBI, which supposedly has expertise on national security that judges lack. The FBI and the Justice Department don't want the courts telling them they are wrong about what constitutes a national security secret -- and they certainly don't want the ACLU telling them."
Posted Dec 14th 2006 7:49PM by
With today's , the annual mouth-foaming that is the Oscar race has begun, albeit with some seemingly anomalous nominations: Under the rules that govern the Globes, there is no "Best Foreign Film category," despite the fact that the Globes are presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Instead, there's only an award for "Best Foreign Language Film."
As a result, two of the five best foreign language film nominees were American movies: Mel Gibson's Mayan dialect-flecked "Apocalypto" and Clint Eastwood's Japanese language "Letters from Iwo Jima," both shoved aside genuinely foreign films.
This is, I am told, no small source of discomfort to the Rules Committee of the Hollywood Foreign Press, which may change its criteria next year -- especially after Gibson announced his intention to direct a remake of " ," filmed entirely in sign language.
Ha. I kid.
But as Daily Variety's intrepid TV columnist Brian Lowry this sort of conundrum won't be repeated at the Oscars, which only nominates properly foreign films.
Posted Dec 13th 2006 11:32PM by
It's the time of year when Hollywood agents take a breather from rolling calls and berating assistants, to offer up a few baubles to show their appreciation for the other 50 weeks of abuse.
Defamer, for example, carries of CAA's portable DVD player handouts, a meager also-ran when compared with William Morris' recent video iPod give-away -- apparently, WMA is from Paramount's Brad Grey last year, who garnered favorable reviews for his iPod largess.
It got me thinking: What is it with Apple? And why can't satellite radio catch a break?
Despite having spent hundreds of millions on content, satellite radio is in the toilet, while Apple continues to print money.
Consider: Apple's stock is , while XM and Sirius are both .
Then comes a report from Forrester Research this week, which that on Apple's iTunes, "the median transaction is just $2.97, with a third of all purchases amounting to one song" and that just "the top 34% of iTunes customers account for 80% of all purchases.
"
In short, so much great content is available commercial free, and what's more, so few people are buying songs on iTunes, but their stock prices are headed in opposite directions. Go figure.
As to why, Slate this recent take on XM and Sirius, currently bleeding vast pools of red ink, with profitability nowhere in sight:
"But while subscribers have followed the talent and the programming, profits haven't.
.. In the absence of XM, Sirius wouldn't have been forced to pay so much for Karmazin, Stern, and college basketball.
In the absence of Sirius, XM wouldn't have been forced to pay so much for Oprah and NASCAR."
In other words, just being in the same room with one another is brutalizing both XM and Sirius.
Meanwhile, commercial radio has managed to take a great new technology called HD radio, and turn it into.
..well, , according to Business Week: "HD radio - at least as it exists today - is largely the same vast wasteland as conventional radio, with stations offering short playlists of music in a few repetitive formats.
"
For now, at least, it appears that while the news for iTunes hasn't been all rosy, it's becoming clear that a bad day at Apple is still better than the best day at XM or Sirius.
Posted Dec 11th 2006 11:49PM by
For the last couple years, the media mega-corporations have been lusting after what could best be described as the three Ls: Large, loyal and legal audiences.
This has proven trickier than anyone expected.
For instance, Napster was large, but illegal. Now, after lawsuits, a shut-down and re-opening, it's legal, but no longer large.
As such, Saturday's news in the Wall Street Journal was for the TV world: Three of the big four TV networks are in talks to create an anti-YouTube, just two months after the wildly popular viral video site sold to Google for more than $1.7 billion.
Per the Journal,
"The talks are driven by media companies' belief that the fast-growing YouTube has built a huge business off their video content.
Although many of the videos on YouTube are homemade videos uploaded by users, some of its most popular clips are pirated copies of television shows."
Ah, and there's the rub: TV shows. Not "NBC shows.
" Not "ABC shows." Not "CBS shows."
Online, there's only two kinds of video -- 'Cool', and stuff that 'sucks.
' The kids don't care about which network created it or needs to profit from it, and that's going to be Lesson One for the networks, which already seem to have devolved into sectarian squabbling.
As CNET :
"The talks deal with complicated matters for the networks--how to put programming on the Internet without cannibalizing TV efforts; how to do that quickly enough to prevent YouTube from profiting; and how to avoid ceding control or branding to partners. ABC parent Walt Disney is not participating in the talks, preferring to go it alone, while the group snubbed a proposal from News Corp.
, which also owns Fox, to use its MySpace social-networking site as the host of the video, the source said."
Such inter-network squabbling is sounding more and more like a fight over who gets to drive the car off the cliff.
As The Motley Fool
"The four networks may have it wrong: Sending more audiences online may wean them further off the television set.
Four rivals competing for mindshare may not settle in harmoniously when each one is out to promote its own slate of new shows. Local affiliates will grow a few more gray hairs."
We ask: When Google's YouTube has already got two of the three L's -- largeness and loyalty -- why reinvent the wheel and quibble over a legality you can never fully enforce?
And as the Journal notes, "The latest round of talks could still founder. All the media companies are weighing attractive offers from Google to pay them licensing fees for their videos to play on YouTube. Google has offered to pay fees of as much as $140 million over three years to Fox, according to a person with knowledge of the offer.
"
When companies try to own the trains and the tracks, they can get into real trouble -- and not just financially. ( ) But more than anything else, getting this many egos to overcome their fears of piracy when viral video is, at its heart, all about breaking the rules -- will surely lead to expensive mediocrity. Just look at the studios wildly unpopular joint venture,
Dealing with Google isn't just a good idea; for the TV networks, it's probably the only idea.
It just seems that Disney just figured that out a lot sooner than anyone else.
Posted Dec 8th 2006 5:38PM by
I just got out of a screening of "Apocalypto."
Here is a movie that gives fresh meaning to the infamous New York Post headline, "Headless Body in Topless Bar." More heads roll than in an al-Qaeda snuff film; I lost count at three or so human hearts torn out and shown to their victims before they died.
So, the first question you probably have is, "Is it any good?"
Unfortunately, it is.
Very good.
I would prefer that it wasn't. Would that all anti-Semitic lunatics have their come-uppance, fail miserably -- publicly -- then limp off into Howard Hughes like isolation, micturating in milk bottles and muttering, "The Way of the Future," over and over.
Thinking people see Mel's stage-crafted "apologies" for what they are: Damage control. Because at his core, he is still an anti-Semite. But enough about Mel the Bigot.
Let's talk about Mel the director.
I am a big believer in letting art speak for itself. Ironically, had Gibson not gotten plastered at Moonshadows and met up with Malibu's finest, there would be a strong, but ironic, possibility that I would now be defending him as "a new Mel" -- one who clearly had rejected any of the hateful depictions of Jews in "The Passion of the Christ" in favor of a new world view.
A 'new beginning,' if you will.
Ironically, having seen "Apocalypto" (from the Greek for "new era or beginning") the parallels between the Mayan conquerors' lust for human sacrifice and the Third Reich's own extermination of millions of Jews are downright eerie: The Yucatan marauders' crops are dying, and so the people look to a high priest who will, to quote the film, make them "a people of destiny," one who can replace godly malediction with benediction.
Watching "Apocalypto," you almost expect the high priest who's sacrificing Mayans on the pyramid to start goose-stepping.
Apres Moonshadows (and, boy, after seeing "Apocalypto," will you ever understand what a prophetic name that bar has), it seems almost naive to think a director capable of producing a film with such clarity about humankind's propensity for cruelty and genocide, but to be so blind to it in his own life.
Then again, maybe everyone can make a new beginning. Or at least try.
Posted Dec 7th 2006 10:55PM by
Filed under:
The National Board of Review issued its picks for Best Actor, Actress and Picture, priming the pump for what yours truly thinks will be a possibly historic Academy Awards next year -- as a majority of the nominees may be African American.
The NBR is, as correctly points out, "a group made up of film educators and other professionals with no official ties to the biz. While its workings are not well known in Hollywood, an NBR nod can help set the tone for the awards season and Top 10 lists that follow."
As Tom O'Neil's always-interesting L.A.
Times blog notes, "The other NBR choices such 'King' and 'Queen' lording over the actor and actress domains -- Forest Whitaker ("Last King of Scotland") and Helen Mirren ("The Queen") -- aren't surprises, but 'Iwo Jima,' Catherine O'Hara and supporting actor champ Djimon Hounsou ("Blood Diamond") get a significant boost from winning the equivalent of the New Hampshire primary of the Oscar race."
Whitaker and Hounsou's nods could be the start of a history-making Oscars, because the NBR's credibility comes from its lack of affiliation with any faction in Hollywood, its opinion is largely trusted by all of Hollywood. Conceiveably, we are looking at an historic group of Best Actor Oscar nominees.
Consider: Besides Whitaker's powerful turn in " " there's Will Smith's tear-jerking performance in " ." And don't forget Eddie Murphy's turn in " " as the oily-but-seductive James "Thunder" Early.
Some free, unsolicited advice, Eddie?
Denying isn't necessarily the way into the hearts of Oscar voters, or any voters, for that matter. As the AP , "Grover Cleveland, running for president in 1884, was faced with accusations that he'd fathered a child out of wedlock; the bachelor acknowledged right away that he'd had a relationship with the woman and said he'd support the child even though he had no idea if it was his (this was pre-DNA testing.) He won the election.
"
It's going to be a hell of an exciting Oscar season, and the nominations might be very exciting news -- especially in light of the current
Posted Dec 7th 2006 9:29PM by
Maybe I am just tired after a long day, or maybe I can't help myself and want to deliberately provoke peals of inarticulate and misspelled obscenities from animal rights nutcases.
In any event, Reuters moved today, and it left me simultaneously alarmed and baffled.
Viz, "Three Hollywood chimpanzees, said to have been punched and beaten to make them perform, will spend the rest of their lives in an animal sanctuary in a cruelty lawsuit settlement, an animal rights group said on Thursday...
After the group made its information public, Hollywood stars Pamela Anderson, Alec Baldwin and Bob Barker pledged never again to appear on screen with a chimpanzee."
This, of course, begged the question: Someone was asking Alec Baldwin to appear on screen with a chimp?
Soon, it became clear to me what Alex was talking about --- but I happen to think it's not a very nice way to refer to his "30 Rock" co-star .
Posted Dec 6th 2006 3:28PM by
After Michael Richards' racist invective at an L.A. comedy club opened a new discussion about race relations in America, Universal Pictures is getting into business with a pair of pragmatists who don't fear a frank discussion of the N-word.
TMZ has learned that director Spike Lee is coming aboard a new film from Imagine Entertainment about the run up to the L.A. riots of 1992, and the aftermath, with a script written by John Ridley ("Three Kings" and "Undercover Brother").
It's been fourteen days since Richards harangue went viral, but over 14 years since a predominantly white jury acquitted four cops who were videotaped beating motorist Rodney King. On parole for a robbery conviction, King led cops on a high speed chase, then finally pulled over. Videotape showed him resisting arrest, with the LAPD tackling, tasering and beating him.
The acquittal of the officers proved too much to bear, and it uncorked a spree of looting, arson and murder; 55 people were killed in L.A. on April 29, 1992.
If Ridley's propitiously timed article, entitled, "The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger" (now in the magazine) is any indication, his script probably won't give L.A. rioters a free pass based on shared skin color.
Posted Dec 5th 2006 9:56PM by
Breaking News: Yahoo! announced a major reorganization this afternoon that basically says its grand media experiment is over: Former ABC television chairman Lloyd Braun will be leaving Yahoo! exactly two years after he as head of its media and entertainment division.
The Wall Street Journal will carry the news of the in tomorrow's paper, and in it, there is plenty to be glum about.
Viz,
"The changes follow concerns within the company's ranks about its strategy, including a memo distributed internally by Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse, dubbed "The Peanut Butter Manifesto." Criticism in the memo, which was reviewed by WSJ, included, "We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company," and "We lack decisiveness.
" ...
The memo's recommendations included a deep reorganization of the company, a 15% to 20% head-count reduction and holding executives accountable for poor performance. "Heads must roll," it read.
"We want to do everything and be everything--to everyone.
We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out..
." the memo reads. "I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world.
The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter."
Braun, to his credit, was fired from Disney just before ABC exploded into primetime, developing shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" only to see them as hits from his rear-view mirror.
But at Yahoo!, Braun faltered after it became clear the astronomical pricetags associated with producing network TV shows just weren't going to work online. By March 2nd, of this year, the New York Times augured his imminent demise -- "Yahoo!
Says it is Backing Away from TV-style Shows."
Despite the fact that Yahoo! seemed to be turning its attention, Braun appeared in that story to issue this defiant dictum: "I thought it would be a good time, given all the rumor and innuendo, for me to reiterate once and for all that I am not going anywhere," Mr.
Braun said.
Eight months later, it's "Mr. Braun?
He dead."
Yahoo! has missed the boat on YouTube and Facebook, and finds itself starring in an "Apocalypse Now" of entertainment media; that said, it's going to take a lot more than firing creative executives to turn the company around.
Posted Dec 4th 2006 3:43PM by
Filed under: ,
Breaking News: TMZ has learned that Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle ("Hotel Rwanda") plans to direct and star in "Miles Davis," a biopic of the legendary jazz innovator.
What's more, Cheadle has hired the Oscar-nominated screenwriting and producing duo, Chris Wilkinson and Steve Rivele ("Nixon"), a pair of lit heavyweights who adapted the life story of boxing's greatest heavyweight, Muhammad Ali, for Michael Mann's "Ali."
Himself a devotee of boxing, Davis would likely have approved. When Miles was making landmark jazz fusion recordings like "Bitches Brew" and "In a Silent Way," he was also contributing extensively to the soundtrack of a 1970 documentary about legendary African-American pugilist, Jack Johnson.
The Davis project has been an idea held dear by Cheadle for the last half dozen years, but until now, a music rights issue threatened to block its progress to the screen. No more.
Posted Dec 1st 2006 6:42PM by
Filed under:
Ah, the end of the year is near, the time when Hollywood plays
its least favorite but most addictive game, "How Much Do You Make,
and Why Am I Not Making As Much, You Talentless Witch?"
And now that all of journalism has been officially reduced to , The Hollywood Reporter had no choice this week but to issue its own list of the in Hollywood.
Nicole Kidman is number one, making $16 million a picture. Apparently, Julia Roberts didn't work this year.
At ten, Jennifer Aniston makes half that, at $8 million.
Now, before any of these women get a swelled head, let's take a moment to acknowledge one thing: It's Celine Dion's world; we just live in it.
The multi-platinum thrush last week, and announced she's cancelling five nights at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
Understand, Dion signed a three-year, $100 million contract at Caesars in March 2003, then understandably extended it through next year.
I say "understandably" because when you break down how much Dion works, or rather how little, you'll see that Nicole Kidman is making, comparatively, about as much as Crocodile Dundee, mate.
Dion's job is essentially a part-time gig; she performs Thursday through Sunday at Caesar's, for 90 minutes a show.
Let me break that down for you: By catching a cold and missing a week's work, Dion stands to lose over $800,000 dollars, or $111 a minute. We know the heart will go on, but for Celine's sake, let's hope the lungs do, too.
Two words of advice for Jennifer Aniston: Singing lessons.
Look into it.
Posted Nov 30th 2006 7:31AM by
Filed under: ,
Thanks to Michael Richards' recent at the Laugh Factory, the issue of race has once again been raised in Hollywood.
Unfortunately, the latest news is not good for minority actors.
A UCLA study says that casting directors "take race and sex into account in ways that would be blatantly illegal were they used in any other industry," according to the study's author.
The study found that 69% of roles were reserved for white actors, 8.5% open to all races and just 8.
1% specifically for African Americans.
The study's author, UCLA Law Professor Russell Robinson told Variety, "Many actors accept this as normal, but depending on the facts of the case, lawsuits can be filed."
Marvelous!
Suing the studios and networks? That's a great way to help a minority actor find more work. There won't be any retribution for that.
("From the producers who brought you the comes...
'Son of Blacklist'!)
What's needed, of course, is meaningful legislation at the state level, and maybe beyond that.
If only California had a governor who was from Hollywood; a governor who understood what it meant to be a struggling actor who studios won't take seriously because of your ethnicity or accent.
Hmmm. Yeah, it's too bad we don't have a governor like that.
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Posted Nov 29th 2006 7:13PM by
My jaw continues to hang open in amazement at Michael Richards.
News came last week that Richards also went on an anti-Semitic hate harangue at a club in the spring, but Richards claimed he had a defense, albeit a lame one.
"Last week, crisis-management expert Howard Rubenstein acknowledged that Richards had shouted anti-Semitic remarks in an April stand-up comedy routine -- well before his appearance earlier this month in which he harangued hecklers with the n-word. But he defended Richards' language about Jews, saying that the comic "is Jewish. He's not anti-Semitic at all. He was role-playing.
"
We'll leave aside for a moment the erroneous idea that Jews (or members of any religion for that matter) can't be self-loathing, and deal with the obvious issue at hand: Turns out, Richards isn't Jewish.
Again, the AP:
"Technically, not having been born by blood as Jewish and not formally going into a conversion, it was purely his interpretation of having adopted Judaism as his religion," Richards' spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "He told me, 'I'm Jewish,' when I asked him .
.. He really thinks of himself as Jewish.
"
The Richards scandal, at its root, is about feelings (hurt ones) and so it's understandable that he might base his faith on his "feelings" as well - but unfortunately, that's not how it works. Not in Catholicism, and certainly not in .
Hell, you even have to register to become a Democrat; you don't just walk into a voting booth and "emote liberality.
"
What's even worse than lacking any Jewish identity is the use of it in the defense of attacking it. Richards' anti-Semitism defense is, at its core, is the lamest, most bogus kind of extenuation: The "I'm Jewish, so I can call someone a cheap kike and get away with it." It's the, "I'm Latino, so I can make jokes about Mexicans" apologia.
These are the cheapest kind of jives, because if something is funny, it's funny. It might be ribald, or even racist, but at least it stands on its own. The comic who says, "Hey, wait a minute -- I'm Italian (or Polish, or black), so I am allowed to say this kind of stuff," is guilty of the worst sin in comedy: Cowardice.
Perhaps, because I often feel like a pilot and identify with their rakish caps, I'll pound on the door of the cockpit during my next flight, demanding "I can fly! Let..
.me..
.fly!"
After the air marshals take me away in chains, I'll have Howard Rubinstein explain to the Associated Press,
"Technically, not having any wings and not receiving any formal training as a pilot, it was purely his interpretation of having adopted aviation as his profession.
.. he told me 'I can fly' when I asked him.
.. He really thinks of himself as a pilot.
"
Posted Nov 28th 2006 10:11PM by
Filed under: , ,
Breaking News: Later, turkeys.
That, apparently, is the post-Thanksgiving message Kate Hudson has for many of the men in her life.
A week and a half after hubby and Black Crowes front-man Chris Robinson from Hudson, the "Le Divorce" star is decamping CAA for rival talent agency Endeavor, TMZ has learned.
There, she's to be repped by Endeavor partner and former CAA agent Patrick Whitesell, whose mission will be to get her mind off of the Black Crowe -- and onto more meaty roles, like the one created by Cameron Crowe. His 2000 sleeper hit, "Almost Famous," got Hudson nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, after all.
Insiders say Hudson had, of late, felt that her CAA reps were focusing on big paydays, rather than on securing her the Oscar hardware that so many actresses crave -- including mom Goldie Hawn, who was nominated twice for "Cactus Flower" (a win) and "Private Benjamin" (a loss).
Wagged one agent observing the inter-agency fray: "After 'You, Me Dupree' the road back [to Oscar nominations] isn't doing an Andy Tennant movie."
The acid-tongued agent was referring to the inauspiciously-named " ," a broad comedy that re-teams Hudson with her "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days" co-star Matthew McConaughey, helmed by Tennant, who's directed movie like "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Anna and the King."
Ouch.
Developing...
Posted Nov 28th 2006 4:59PM by
So much is written these days about "downloads," it's easy to get the idea that they're the big story in media.
They're only half the story.
Today, Wal-Mart formally announced its own video download service, which is a pretty big deal; Wal-Mart accounts for an astonishing 40% of all DVD sales in the U.S.
They're making a smart move. Technology is threatening to make middleman retailers like Wal-Mart irrelevant, and as Disney's recent deal with Apple's iTunes showed, that makes retailers extremely bitchy.
Only last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that Wal-Mart rival Target "made Disney testy in September, when it fired off a letter demanding the same low wholesale prices on DVDs that Apple Computer Inc. is paying Disney to offer movie downloads over iTunes. At the time, Target threatened to cut back on its efforts to sell Disney's DVDs.
"
That rift appears to have been , but just for now.
I say "for now" because today, Time Warner, the world's largest media company (and yes, a partner in this website, dear reader), made its big download announcement.
Per , our dear old dad "plans to offer services that let consumers download movies from the Internet that can be burned onto DVDs in 2007, its top executive said Tuesday.
"
No doubt, this horrifies Wal-Mart and Target to no end, and Wal-Mart needs headaches from Hollywood like a hole in the head. Wall Street had its worst day in more than four months on Monday, after concerns were raised about the health retail following a highly unusual sales decline at Wal-Mart Stores.
As Bloomberg today, U.
S. same-store sales dropped for the first time in more than a decade.
At the start of this post, I said that downloads are, of course, only half the story.
Here's what I meant by that: The digital upload will be to the rest of the decade what the download has been thus far.
For proof of this, see YouTube's of a deal with Verizon that will upend all headlines about downloads.
Per the BBC, "The new deal will mean that (Verizon) VCast Users, who pay $15 a month to watch and download video to their mobile, will have access to a limited number of approved videos from Youtube," -- which is not the big news.
The big news is, per the BBC, " The Verizon tie-up also means users will be able to upload short clips captured on their mobile phones."
In other words, suddenly, there are hundreds of millions of reporters and cameramen out there, all ready to upload their cellphone video of an encounter with a sputtering Mel Gibson or a spewing Michael Richards.
As Michael Hirschorn in this December's Atlantic Monthly, "In the year 2014, people have access to a breadth of depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age.
Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape."
Which is all to the good, except for one thing: We journalists might be out of business.
Posted Nov 21st 2006 9:48PM by
Filed under: , ,
Breaking News: TMZ has just learned that one of Fox Atomic's first-releases, a remake of the 80's classic comedy, "Revenge of the Nerds," shut down, permanently, just weeks into production.
The move came in response to a loss of its location at Emory University .
Per Variety, "more than a third of the film was to be shot" at the venerable Southern institution, but the school backed out of its agreement to allow Fox to film on campus. The trade press reported that "Emory officials ultimately balked at the raunchy nature of the project" but an insider familiar with the film attributed it more to the disruptive nature of having a film crew shooting amidst classes.
In addition, the movie had a large cast of low-cost stars, like the of "Laguna Beach," but many of those thespians have other commitments that won't allow them to wait around indefinitely. Insiders say the bad news was given to the film's director, "Fanboys" director Kyle Newman, only an hour ago.
It's an unfortunate stumble for Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice's nascent teen label, which somewhat understandably just passed on the opportunity to have its inner workings picked-over in the press . Posted Nov 21st 2006 6:56PM by
Iraq, that demented slaughterhouse that has Congressman Charlie Rangel's plan to going down in flames, may well be a war that's winding down. In the words of Tom Friedman, we're looking at either 10 more weeks or 10 more years in Baghdad.
But back in Hollywood, another war is heating up: It's record labels versus websites, Version. 2.0!
For those of you confused as to why Universal Music Group -- the world's largest record company -- with the world's most popular website, MySpace -- here's a quick pre-Thanksgiving primer on the run-up to the conflict.
1) On Friday, Universal sues MySpace, claiming it tacitly and illegally exhorts members to share music and music videos on the site without permission.
2) Problem for MySpace: News Corp's president Peter Chernin has already staked out the moral high ground as a , having become known as father of "the broadcast flag" -- essentially, an itty-bitty ID embedded in an online piece of audio or video that says whether it's OK for it to be "shared" with millions of "friends.
"
3) Complicating matters for Universal, social networking sites like MySpace and shared video websites like YouTube also appear to be helping the record business, breaking new acts and serving as virtual A R divisions even as they threaten to erode sales by illegal file sharing.
As the Sunday Times of London , the sleeper online hit, " ," has garnered nearly a million downloads for a previously unknown singer named Terra Naomi.
Viz,
"If Arctic Monkeys' online army narrowed the gap between artist and fan, Say It's Possible has snapped it shut.
Gone are the days when kids scrawled their favorite singers' names on their school bag, or joined a fan club for a few signed photos and a badge. Naomi's fans nestle next to her online, sitting like her, singing her words and strumming a guitar just as she showed them -- after hundreds of requests, she posted a video of her fret-work. Even her fans have fans.
"
4) Maybe MySpace would have given the labels a reason not to sue had it not formed MySpace Records, which hopes to capitalize on the undisiscoverd bands it aggregates: 5) Is there a solution for the records labels that doesn\'t involve, as usual, lawsuits? One might be, "If you can\'t beat \'em, join em." That\'s where Habbo Hotel comes in.
\n Let me know what you think...
\n\n",0] ); D(["ce"]); //-->4) That was all well and good; new acts are just what the music business needs most. As Jeff Leeds noted in the New York Times over the summer, the industry, especially the touring business, is
Viz,
"Last year, according to the concert trade journal Pollstar, 6 of the 10 highest-grossing tours starred artists in their late 50s or 60s, among them the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, the Eagles and Elton John. Those six alone accounted for more than $470 million in domestic ticket sales -- about 30 percent of the total for the year's 50 biggest tours.
"
But then MySpace went from giving the labels a reason not to sue, to giving them every reason to: Almost exactly one year ago, the company , which naturally hopes to capitalize on the undiscovered bands it aggregates.
5) So, is there a solution for the record labels that doesn't involve, as usual, lawsuits? Apparently so.
One might be, "If you can't beat 'em, join em," and that's where comes in.
Per the UK's Guardian today, Universal's biggest act, U2, is , instead of suing it:
"In the UK, more than 800,000 users regularly meet in the sprawling virtual hotel to chat, play games, decorate their rooms and hang out in a variety of locations from pizza joints to swimming pools and nightclubs to burger bars ..
. Globally, more than 66 million Habbo characters have been created, there are communities in 29 countries across five continents, and it now has 7 million unique users a month. When they sign up, new users, typically aged between 11 and 18, create their own digitized versions of themselves and are then free to roam around and interact with others online at the same time.
"
Time will tell if the old maxim that applies to roach motels does or doesn't apply to record companies that venture into the Habbo: Labels check in, but they don't check out.
Posted Nov 19th 2006 12:10PM by
Discussions about whether Oprah by Tom Cruise's pointed failure to invite the daytime doyenne of domesticity to Italy be damned: We have proof of passive aggressive retaliation!
Well, OK.
Maybe not. But at the least, an amusing case of coincidence.
Today, you see, "O" -- -- landed with a resounding thud on our neighbor's doorstep.
So startled were we, that we hastened to examine the impact crater of this sizable periodical. When we saw the cover, a smile crossed our weary, media-creased face.
Smack in the middle of the December "O," a coverline blares, "We've got answers to life's stickiest situations!
What to do if someone...
"
And then, finally, there it was, in all its bitchy glory:
Hears you didn't invite them... According to Oprah's forest-felling mag, the correct response (on page 298, natch!) when someone learns they weren't invited to a party is to say, " 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I invited a different group of friends.' The end. Long explanations are the worst."
Indeed.
Posted Nov 17th 2006 3:43PM by
As Ross Perot used to say, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
These days, the irasicble Texan seems more spot-on than ever, if the New York Times is any indication. We're struck by both today's (and this Sunday's) Times pieces on the direction that video is taking.
In an by the Times patrician theater critic Charles Isherwood, (and, full disclosure; my old editor at Daily Variety in New York. How are you, Charles?
I hope you're not still lunching on those dreadful empanadas down in Chelsea) the Gray Lady stops to ponder YouTube's heretofore unmentioned status as a repository for high culture.
Viz,
"Until recently I had assumed that the "you" in YouTube referred to anybody but me, maybe everybody but me. Like who?
College kids with a compulsive need to procrastinate. Media-obsessives anxious to keep track of the hot new joke or political gaffe. Exhibitionists and their friends.
Lovers of humiliation comedy. People with an excessive fondness for the cute antics of their pets ..
. Certainly, this freakish and freakishly large video archive offers plenty of material to sate the appetites of those constituencies. But it also offers a dizzying array of material for addicts of what, for lack of more egalitarian term, I'll call high culture.
Or high-ish culture. I'm not talking just about opera and dance, but also that often derided but enduring enterprise called "the Broadway musical."
In other words, surprise.
Even in democratized online video, there's still room for those who don't worship at the temple of "Jackass: Number Two."
The drawback, Isherwood notes, is the Web's lack of predictability -- and not in a good way. "An important caveat: things come and go on YouTube, sometimes hour by hour; clips I saw one day would be untraceable the next.
"
Simultaneously, in this weekend's forthcoming New York Times Magazine, Lorne Manly offers a look at how TV is becoming as interactive as -- but a lot more precise than -- YouTube, in a entitled, "Your TV Would Like a Word with You." Viz,
"The new purveyors of interactive television insist they have learned from earlier missteps and have a better sense of exactly what people want to interact with. For John Kelly, a computer technician for Adelphia high-speed cable in Wichita, Kan.
, that would be football. On top of the $249 he pays DirecTV for a season of its Sunday Ticket cavalcade of games, he ponies up another $99 for its Super Fan option. Now he can watch eight games at a time, all arrayed on his 54-inch television set, a trick that comes in handy when he and his brother watch football together.
.. Mr.
Kelly can also customize the Sunday Ticket football package, to get immediate notices about the exploits of his favorite players and teams. Two Sundays ago, when a nurse friend had to work at the same time her beloved Tennessee Titans took the field, Mr. Kelly punched in some of their names.
Whenever those Titans did something noteworthy on the field, an advisory would pop up on his television screen, and he'd fire off a text message to her ...
"Without his newfound powers, he says, "it feels like I have a hand cut off."
Leaving aside the copious amount of Ritalin Mr. Kelly will no doubt soon need to function in society, a question arises from all of this.
"Who's right? The Internet brainiacs, or the satellite TV geeks?"
If Rupert Murdoch is any indication, the Web's infinite diversity will defeat satellite TV.
This week, Business Week a look at the wrestling match that's been Murdoch against John Malone, the owner of Liberty Media.
"Murdoch told investors on Nov. 14 that he is nearing a deal to buy back Malone's stake in News Corp., which is nearly large enough to threaten Murdoch's control over his empire.
By swapping his DirecTV stake, Murdoch will be leaving a satellite business loaded with risk and creating more room for growth on the Web. DirecTV is certainly a profitable company. But over the next few years, it will face increasing pressure from the cable TV industry and the telecom industry.
Satellite players already lag cable and phone companies in the market for high-speed Internet access. That huge gap is about to get even wider. Cable and TV companies are going to upgrade their networks so that consumers can download movies and other big files faster than ever.
And the next upgrade will make it easier for consumers to send big video files as well. That will be extremely important as sharing homemade videos online takes off."
As they say in TV news, stay tuned.
Posted Nov 13th 2006 7:36PM by
Breaking News: In a security breach with legal ramifications far beyond Hollywood's insular post-production community, an unfinished trailer for "Spider-man 3" has leaked onto the Internet.
The theatrical trailer for the Sam Raimi blockbuster, which was ultimately not selected by Sony for it's "Spider-man 3" marketing campaign, shows scenes from the movie that bear the watermark of The Ant Farm, an award-winning trailer house that works on numerous studio films every year, including those of Sony Pictures.
But, unfortunately for Sony, the tell-tale watermark of the post production house is not a reliable indication of the source of the leak, insist Mike Greenfeld and Barbara Glazer, co-CEOs of The Ant Farm, who stressed that the studio doesn't believe the leak came from their company. Posted Nov 10th 2006 5:37PM by
EXCLUSIVE: TMZ has learned that the Wachowski Bros. are pulling double duty at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Not only are the the famously press-averse Wachowski Brothers Siblings prepping " " - based on the iconic 1960s manga comics property, they're being pressed into service by their old "Matrix" producer Joel Silver to do an emergency rewrite on the ending of the forthcoming Nicole Kidman sci-fi thriller, "The Invasion."
In the film, Kidman playing a Washington DC psychiatrist who discovers that a mysterious and fatal pandemic is actually being caused by an extraterrestrial virus, and her infected son is the only hope for a cure.
A studio insider familiar with the situation confirms that the ending of the film left something to be desired in the eyes of Warner Bros. production president Jeff Robinov, and that Silver quickly reloaded his "V for Vendetta" scribes to fashion a new ending, the details of which have not yet emerged.
The film is the English-language premiere of German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, who directed the riveting 2004 drama "The Downfall," about the final paroxysms of insanity and terror within Hitler's inner circle at the end of World War II. That film got nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and put Hirschbiegel on the hot short list of directors for major studios. Our moles tell us that Hirschbiegel and original screenwriter Dave Kajganich will get to keep their credits, but it's not clear if Andy and Larry?
, Lana? ? Wachowski will also get writing credit.
Says an insider: "This is normal. It's a thriller, and occasionally, a studio will want it to make it, you know, actually thrilling."
Developing.
..
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Posted Nov 9th 2006 11:04PM by
Filed under: , ,
What were the odds?
"The Stanford Prison Experiment," a new film about the most notorious prison abuse experiment of the 20th century, hires its director on the very same week that the man responsible for the most egregious prison abuse scandal of the 21st century is fired.
Coincidences, it's been said, are "the puns of destiny." The British writer Arthur Koestler described them as when "two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands."
String number one today is Donald Rumsfeld, whose departure today was announced with a front page banner headline in today's Los Angeles Times, along with a
Viz,
"More than two years after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld offered to resign in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, President Bush finally agreed to let Rumsfeld go..
.the political equivalent of bringing down the pinata once it's been battered beyond recognition."
String number two, of course, is the from earlier this week that "The Usual Suspects" writer has been hired by Madonna's Maverick Films to direct his script about the infamous
Per the AP,
"Maverick acquired rights to the story in 2002 from Philip G.
Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University who conducted an experiment on obedience in 1971. He recruited 24 men to portray inmates and guards in a prison setting. Zimbardo planned to study the men for two weeks, but dangerous behavior among them prompted him to stop the experiment after six days.
"
It remains to be seen if the "Stanford Prison" movie will ever get made. Notwithstanding Daily Variety's story break about McQuarrie proceeding to shoot his script in April, there is also the messy matter of pending litigation over the rights to the material and about the same topic.
Nonetheless, Zimbardo's experiment has often been used to highlight the susceptibility of people to become docious when provided a validated dogma and the social and institutional support to reinforce it; ironically, "The Stanford Prison Experiment" may well be a film that actually lays less, not more, blame at Rumsfeld's feet for the at Abu Ghraib.
Posted Nov 8th 2006 1:30PM by
We feel mixed emotions here at City of Industry this morning.
On the one hand, it's our one year anniversary here at TMZ, a high holy day for the paparazzi, Paris Hilton, and by extension, Chihuahuas everywhere. We should be ebullient.
But on the other hand, we can't help but wince at the agonizing and costly flop Hollywood producer Steve Bing produced last night -- and we're not talking about a movie here.
True, the reticent Bing is a film producer with a mixed track record. He backed the mildly successful Tom Hanks CGI extravaganza "The Polar Express," as well as the horrid Sly Stallone remake of "Get Carter.
" But he was also the chief proponent of the failed ballot measure Proposition 87, which would have put a 4% tax on oil company profits to help fund alternative fuels besides the 50 million year old black goop that oozes out of the Earth's crust.
And while it's not unusual for Hollywood types to get behind green, tree-huggy political causes, they don't often spend $50 million dollars to do so. Despite the nearly $200 million in TV advertising time spent by both oil companies and Hollywood Dems, voters were about the planet-saving initiative when it came time to pull the lever in the voting booth.
Bing's disastrous defeat is worth examining, not for what it says about the electorate, but for revealing how quickly Hollywooders seem to forget or abandon their own sound marketing precepts when they enter politics.
Rule No. 1: In Hollywood, you never use your own money.
Rule No. 2: In Hollywood, glitz sells.
But "Proposition 87"?
You call that a title? Had Bing re-flagged Prop 87 as "Payback Time For the Who Reaped from Hurricane Katrina While Po' Folk Sat on Rooftops Awaiting Rescue Tax," it would have passed in a landslide.
Rule No.
3: You don't solve a 21st century problem with 20th century solutions.
I mean, TV ads?
Where was the Prop 87 MySpace page?
The MeetUp.com meetings? The YouTube videos produced by cutting edge directors that savagely poke fun at the oil fat cats and their crass fear-mongering?
Where was the Howard Dean inspired grass roots organizing?
I hate to criticize someone as generous and forward-thinking as Mr. Bing, who made his $600 million fortune the old-fashioned way (He inherited it.
) but such civic-minded generosity implemented as it was seems like borderline arrogance. Just because one can snap one's fingers and get a great table at Mr. Chow's, Bing seemed to think that writing a $50 million check for a bunch of TV spots will suffice to win over the masses.
California is 43% percent Democratic; 34% Republican. Had Bing worked to raise $50 million five bucks at a time as Dean did, the result would have been a blockbuster win, not a massive and personal loss. But where's the glamor in that?
Something that you just gotta know?
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