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The TV networks' ratings for "premiere week," when many returning shows have their first new episodes of the season, were up over last year's performance. As Reuters reports:
CBS on Tuesday claimed victory as the most watched television network in prime-time during last week's fall premieres, but more people tuned in overall than last year, giving each network victories to tout.
Led by crime dramas "CSI," "CSI: Miami," and "Without a Trace," CBS drew an average of slightly over 13 million viewers a night, up 2 percent from 2005, compared to second-place ABC's 12.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
But ABC scored the week's No. 1 show with the premiere of hospital drama "Grey's Anatomy," which pulled in 25 million viewers on its Thursday night premiere to "CSI's" 23 million. . . .
"It was a solid premiere week, and I don't think there were any real ratings disasters," said Nicholas Fonseca, staff editor for Entertainment Weekly magazine. "I think every network has something to be happy with."
But there were no big winners either, as happened in 2004 with ABC hits "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," making industry watchers anxious to see whether viewership will slip in coming weeks.
NBC showed improvement over last year also. And although it was reported earlier that Fox's ratings had slipped by 20-35 percent with the coming of the new season, the network bounced back during premiere week:
Fox also improved during the week, led by dramas "House" and "Prison Break." Its viewership was up 16 percent among all viewers and 11 percent in adults 18-49. . . . Fox also awaits the mid-season premieres of "American Idol" and drama "24," which are among TV's top-rated shows.
Whether this increase in viewership will be sustained is the big question, of course. Many of the new shows seem to be very similar to one another, and one suspects that there will be a major shake-out down the line, as there are few shows with obvious hit potential.
Probably the strongest candidates for success so far are NBC's smart soap opera Studio 60 on Sunset Strip, Fox's sex-heavy but funny comedy 'Til Death, and CBS's Shark, with James Woods in another of the network's strong lineup of pro-law and order shows.
Most likely to be cancelled first: Fox's amusing Happy Hour, which has drawn about one-fourth as many viewers as timeslot competitor Survivor: Cook Island on CBS. The network has placed the show on a production hiatus and replaced it with reruns of 'Til Death, which benefits from the relative star power of Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond).
Being replaced, even if only "temporarily," by another show is bad enough, and being replaced by a rerun is even worse. But being replaced by a rerun of a brand-new show is a real disaster.
The Fox TV network debuts its shows earlier than the others, in an evident effort to get them off to a good start before the real competition begins. However, if a show doesn't click early, it's likely to be on a short lead once the other nets begin running new episodes of their top programs. Hence, Fox is reshuffling its lineup a bit, which probably presages some imminent cancellations. Broadcasting and Cable reports that Fox's ratings have declined rather more than the net's management and stockholders would probably like:
Fox’s new shows have been far from electrifying. They debuted in August, while rival broadcasters have been in reruns. Credit Suisee media analyst William Drewry says that since NBC, ABC, CBS and The CW have put on fresh shows, the ratings for Fox shows have fallen 20-35%.
In an effort to show better profitabilty to their corporate conglomerate owners, magazines are instituting hiring freezes to reduce expenses through attrition. Advertising Age reports:
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., where ad pages through August are down 6.1%, according to TNS Media Intelligence, has a freeze under way. And at Time Inc., where pages are off 2.9% through August, the heads of finance and human resources have gotten together over the past month to look at all open positions; which vacancies actually get filled will be up to four executives who report directly to Chairman-CEO Ann S. Moore.
In addition, numerous magazines have shut down in the past year.
The Gridiron Gang, mentioned immediately below, is a very good film, by the way, well worth seeing. Starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson," the film is based on the true-life story of a juvenile-home worker who put together a football team that helped some of the young men learn good character and thereby find a way out of the gang life which sucks in so many young people today and destroys their lives.
Watching the film, one feels great sympathy for the boys even while seeing that their choices are indeed choices and are appallingly stupid and destructive of both others and themselves. The key is that the boys don't believe they have a choice in life until their coach shows them that they do.
This is a truth we can all benefit from remembering at times. Our overall circumstances are indeed largely outside our control, but how we react to them and what we make of them and ourselves are left up to us.
The belief that we don't have a choice is the thing that most certainly cripples us, far more powerfully than circumstances ever can.
Hence the film is about much more than football, touching on issues of race and class and the question of how much of our behavior is determined by circumstances (including genetics) and how much we choose. It's a good deal more serious and thoughtful than the general run of movies this year, and I recommend it highly.
Jackass Number 2 was the weekend movie box office champ with an impressive take of $29 million. Jet Li's Fearless came in second at $10.5 million.
The football movie The Gridiron Gang came in third with about $9.5 million, showing a strong continued appeal in its second week.
Although overall box office take was down for the third consecutive week, reflecting a year-long trend, Jackass Number 2 outgrossed the first Jackass move by $6 million and earned back its production costs in just the first weekend.
You may draw your own conclusions about the imminent fall of Western Civilization.
I've written frequently about how technology is changing the media industry—both on this site and in articles such as today's piece on media consolidation on Tech Central Station—and one of the most significant events yet is about to happen: the Nielsen service is about to begin reporting on how many people watch the advertisements on commercial programs, in addition to the previous convention of reporting how may people watch the surrounding programs.
The first such ratings will be released on November 18 of this year.
This is a highly important change, of course, and it has TV executives understandably nervous. In a time when DVRs and the TV remote make it easy for viewers to zip through commercials without watching them or to switch back and forth among various channels to avoid sitting through advertisements, the companies that pay for TV programs are of course intensely interested in knowing whether the programs are actually delivering viewers to their ads and not just to the programs around them.
The effect of this new information will not be solely on television, by any means. Certainly advertisers have already attempted to lure viewers to watch their ads by creating amusing scenarios, little mysteries, and the like—as they have always done, but now more commonly and perhaps a bit desperately. That's old news.
The real significance will be if the ratings cause advertisers to decide that they are not getting the best return on their investments in TV programming and choose to migrate more to newspapers, magazines, radio, and especially the Web. That would depress television's profitability, though over the long run it would continue to rise as the overall economy contnues to grow.
What it would do most profoundly, I think, is raise the attractiveness of the web.
And what that infusion of money will do will be to accelerate the corporatizaion of the web, although it will still remain a more diverse medium than television, with a buy-in cost of basically zero for content providers (meaning all of us). More money will flow to web content providers, a much larger proportion of whom will not be affiliated with corporate giants than is currently the case with any other communications medium.
If that happens, this could be another great tidal change in the American mass media. The opening of the media into a wider range of voices will continue and accelerate, and although efforts by big government and big business to control the communications media will continue, the technological and social momentum will almost certainly be too much for them to overcome.
I'm betting that the effect will not be immediately obvious but that over time it will indeed be momentous.
Saturday night has long been a desert on television because the networks and cable channels came to the conclusion that nobody worth chasing for advertisers is at home then. Hence they largely programmed cheap shows that had a chance of appealing to babysitters.
Much of the Saturday night programming in recent years has been replays of theatrical movies which most people have already had several chances to see in the theater and on other cable channels, magazine programs about murderers, and reruns of shows that had appeared earlier in the week. That's why the nets run those three-hour marathons of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on Saturday night.
Of course, such a choice becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If purveyors program only for teenage girls, then teenage girls is the audience they are going to get—if that.
That's why it's interesting to see ABC trying something different, running college football on Saturday nights.
Notre Dame went into the game under intense scrutiny after their loss last week to Michigan, and the Irish got behind early and stayed there nearly all the game. Heavy winds and driving rain roared into the stadium throughout the second half, making it immensely difficult to mount a passing attack on offense, which made it even tougher for ND to score points and mount a comeback.
On top of all that, the wind direction actually reversed at the end of the third quarter, when the teams switch goals, so that the Irish had the wind against them the entire second half of the game, instead of being able to move with the wind in the last quarter.
In the end, however, the Irish stormed back as their defense finally managed to put some pressure on Spartan quarterback Drew Stanton, and the ND offense finally kicked into gear as QB Brady Quinn started to show better throwing accuracy and/or his receivers managed to run their routes more accurately.
In the end, the Irish won 30-27 on a 27-yeard interception return for a TB by ND cornerback Terrail Lambert.
Notre Dame didn't look like a potential national champion by any means, but it was a great game—and it certainly was much more interesting than another episode of 48 Hours Mystery.
It's good to see ABC try this, and it seems to me that it will be a good thing if the choice proves successful.
Yesterday we noted that NBC is leaning toward including Madonna's mock crucifixion scene when it airs her concert special in November. Catholic and Orthodox church organizations have protested the aging pop star's inclusion of the scene in her concert shows, and they will undoubtedly view a decision by NBC to run it as an insult to Christians.
As noted yesterday, NBC is probably going to run the scene, and there will probably be complaints from Christians.
NBC will undoubtedly be willing to endure any controversy and in fact expect to benefit from it.
Not so with atheists.
NBC is airing the Christian program Veggie Tales, but it has censored out all refernces to Christ and Christianity. According to the AP report,
Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber always had a moral message in their long-running "VeggieTales" series, a collection of animated home videos for children that encourage moral behavior based on Christian principles. But now that the vegetable stars have hit network television, they cannot speak as freely as they once did, and that has got the Parents Television Council steamed.
The conservative media-watchdog group issued a statement Wednesday blasting NBC, which airs "VeggieTales," for editing out some references to God from the children's animated show.
"What struck me and continues to strike me is the inanity of ripping the heart and soul out of a successful product and not thinking that there will be consequences to it," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council. "The series is successful because of its biblical world view, not in spite of it. That's the signature to `VeggieTales."'
The references to Christ and Christian values offended the network's broadcast standards, the AP story reported:
Two weeks ago, NBC began airing 30-minute episodes of "VeggieTales" on Saturday mornings. The show was edited to comply with the network's broadcast standards, said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks.
"Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of view," she said. . . .
All programs set to air on NBC must meet the network's broadcast standards, said Alan Wurtzel, a broadcast standards executive. "VeggieTales" was treated the same as any other program, he said.
"There's a fine line of universally accepted religious values," he said. "We don't get too specific with any particular religious doctrine or any particular religious denomination."
The program's creator/producer, Steve Vischer, said he understands the network's position:
"VeggieTales is religious; NBC is not," he said. "I want to focus people more on `Isn't it cool that Bob and Larry are on television?' "
What NBC thinks is cool is something a bit different: grabbing a particular audience of impressionable young people without offending powerful anti-Christian advocacy groups such as People for the American Way and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
To get uncensored copies of the Veggie Tales programs, click here.
The nascent but distinct and ongoing reversal of the corporate consolidation of the U.S. media received another boost yesterday with the Tribune Co.'s announcement that it is willing to sell any or all of its 11 newspapers and 25 television stations.
The Tribune Co. announcement follows hard on the heels of the selloff of a dozen newspapers by Knight Ridder, which was the nation's second-largest newspaper chain (after Gannett).
“The restructuring of these partnerships frees the company to move quickly to pursue strategic alternatives to further enhance shareholder value,” said Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons. “Under these terms, all shareholders benefit.”
The firm's newspapers have been hit hard by competition from the internet, as the New York Times reports:
The media business has been in turmoil as readers, viewers and advertisers have shifted their habits and turned to the Internet. Newspapers in particular are facing a slump in circulation and little growth in advertising revenues while at the same time facing rising costs.
The competition has depressed the media giant's stock price, and the only thing that has raised it, interestingly, has been the increasing recent rumors that Tribune Co. would divest itself of some of its holdings:
Tribune shares, like those of other public media companies, have weakened significantly over the last few years, falling 36 percent since 2003, when Mr. FitzSimons took over. But the stock has risen recently as speculation has increased that it might sell some assets, and it shot up 4.4 percent yesterday.
As reported earlier on this site, the corporatization and business consolidation of the U.S. media, which began in the 1960s and caused much anguish among leftist critics and media analysts, was in fact a positive thing that actually increased competition in American mass media. And as I noted in in the post cited at the head of this paragraph, it was always very likely that the consolidation would reverse once it became necessary in order for media firms to make themselves leaner and more effective at responding to competition. This, too, will increase competition and will ultimately be a good thing, as I suggested earlier.
The current de-consolidation, then, is a response to competition and will itself create greater competition.
That is how markets work: brilliantly.
NBC TV is pondering what to do about rock singer Madonna's upcoming TV special on the network. A video of the middle-aged pop star's latest concert will be broadcast on the network in November. The problem: Madonna sings one song, "Live to Tell," while suspended on a cross, bound by silver cuffs and wearing a crown of thorns.
Catholic and Orthodox church groups have protested the spectacle. Madonna defends it by saying that it is not "anti-Christian, sacrilegious or blasphemous." She says that in fact Jesus himself would be just like her if he were here today: "It is no different than a person wearing a cross or 'taking up the cross' as it says in the Bible. Rather, it is my plea to the audience to encourage mankind to help one another and to see the world as a unified whole. I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing."
OK. . . .
NBC will probably air the scene. E! Online reports:
NBC President Kevin Reilly told TVGuide.com several weeks ago that the scene will probably stay put because Madonna "felt strongly about it" and considers it a highlight of her show.
"We viewed it and, although Madonna is known for being provocative, we didn't see it as being ultimately inappropriate," Reilly said.
This was a foregone conclusion, really. The scene is obviously a central part of the show, and the network would be subjected to widespread scorn if it deleted it. They wouldn't have bought the program if they weren't wiling to air the scene.
As to what it all means, I suspect that most of the audience will get the message Madonna is trying to send in her usual unsophisticated, unsubtle way: that religion is all about caring about other people and doing good works.
That sounds nice on the surface, but it is very bad theology because it considers only half the story—the part about loving God with all one's heart, and all one's soul, and all one's strength is missing, and it is the foundation for the message about loving one's neighbor as oneself.
Nonetheless, I doubt that the scene will have any real effect on what people think about the Almighty, one way or the other.
Fox's new sitcom Happy Hour (Thursday nights at 8:30 EDT) is a real guilty pleasure—a show about moral chaos with surprising humor and cleverness.
Happy Hour follows the misadventures of a small-town Missouri sad sack who moves in with a would-be suave, Rat Pack bachelor in a very ordinary Chicago apartment. As in ABC's comedy-drama Men in Trees, the women want their men to have an impossible combination of contradictory qualities, looking for a perfectly sensitive, thoughtful . . . Tarzan.
And the men want, well, the women. It’s a situation with a good deal of humor in it—though probably not so funny to have to live it.
The cast is excellent, especially Beth Lacke, who is quite simply the funniest woman on television today. The show is worth watching if only to see what she'll say or do next.
Any program that comes out in favor of the 4 p.m. martini is all right by me, and the characters' unabashed and frequently unhinged pursuit of the good life in our modern-day mismash of conflicting values is truly comic and highly enlightening.
This is one I'll watch again.
In ABC's new comedy-drama program Men in Trees, kooky blonde actress Anne Heche plays a famous “relationship coach” and authoress of women’s romantic self-help books who is temporarily stranded in Alaska after discovering that her fiancé has been cheating on her.
In this simple, natural, and untamed environment she predictably realizes that she really knows nothing about men and romantic relationships. Naturally, she decides to stay there, get some wisdom, and write a truly informed book about men and love.
Presumably, new illusions will be shattered in funny-serious ways each week.
What the great screenwriter-director Preston Sturges called Topic A is of course at the center of things, and it seems likely to remain there, given the concept of the show.
The program is likeable because Heche has an amiably goofy presence and her character's growing awareness of her personal weaknesses and her willingness to change them are quite laudable.Produced by critical favorite Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is another primetime soap opera with an interest in serious issues, this time set behind the scenes at a network television sketch comedy program.
The cast is strong and reasonably likeable despite their characters' largely amoral and power-mad nature, and the show has some intentionally funny moments.
The discussion of issues is laughably earnest and elementary, as in Woody Allen’s non-comedy films and Sorkin's other work, but it’s reasonably diverting to watch wealthy, influential people discuss how they should use their power.
In that way it’s a good deal like The West Wing.
The new CBS program Jericho (Monday nights at 10 p.m. EST is set in small Kansas town after an atomic explosion has hit Denver.
The premiere episode seems to blame the U.S. President’s zeal in combating terrorism as the cause of the attack, but it also shows the small town mayor’s political rival trying to use the situation to gain advantage, in a manner reminiscent of national Democrats regarding the Iraq War. That shows an admirable nonpartisanship on the producers’ part.
Later in the show, the townspeople find out that Atlanta has been hit also. As is common for these programs, the crisis brings out both the best and the worst in people. Mysterious benefactor characters and unexpected heroes arise with near-cliché frequency. In this one, a visitor from St. Louis fills the first role, and the mayor’s prodigal son is the latter. The crisis creates divisions among the townspeople, but they pull together when they have to—with obvious analogies to and lessons for post-9/11 America.
Interesting and worth watching.
I like opera but don't listen to it much or go to them very often. However, this sounds to me like great news: Sirius Radio is launching a new channel that will play Metropolitan Opera performances, both live and from some 1,500 radio broadcasts recorded during the past eight decades. It would be even better if other productions were included as well, but the Met is very good indeed, and the station should be worth listening to. It's something that I'd visit every so often if I had their service.
Parenthetical rant:
I get XM with my DirecTV subscription, but I never listen to it because the dirtbags at XM dropped their progressive rock station.
Actually, the prog rock station was pretty crappy anyway, as it was dominated by long performances by jam bands and very little prog. I have nothing against jam bands, mind you, but an actual prog rock station is little enough to ask for, people.
The New York Times has implemented a fairly subtle redesign in its print editions today.
Henceforth the paper's news stories will have justified text, meaning that they have an even margin on both left and right. Stories that include any analysis or opinion will have a ragged right margin, in which most lines end before reaching the right side of the printed column.
The only exception will be the editorial pages, where the justified margins will remain.
The newspaper's editors say they do not expect the change to be obvious to most readers, but they think that it will have a "subliminal effect" in providing readers unconsciously with the critical distinction between news stories and opinion or analysis.
Perhaps.
Noting that many readers had expressed confusion and dismay over the frequent inclusion of reporters' opinions in what were ostensibly news stories, and the resulting impression that the newspaper was surreptitiously trying to inculcate readers with a left-wing bias, the Times's "credibility committee" recommended the slight redesign.
As noted earlier on several occasions in this space, big media companies are doing their level best to extend their current broadcast, cable, and satellite hegemony to the internet. Rupert Murdoch talked about his firm's strategy yesterday. News Corp's approach goes against the grain of current trends, which is for media firms to develop connections with internet portals.
Murdoch said that News Corp, the parent company of the Fox brands, is going to use a moden in which web surfers are expected to go directly to the firm's various sites. AP reports:
Rupert Murdoch told an investor conference Tuesday that he didn't see a need to distribute programming or other media content from his News Corp. conglomerate through Internet portals.
Murdoch, asked why he hadn't made deal with large aggregators of online content like Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) or Microsoft Corp.'s MSN portal, said he didn't see that strategy as necessary for building Internet traffic.
"We're not sure the portal model is the way of the future at all," Murdoch told a conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs. "We think people are going straight to the sites."
Murdoch, whose acquisition of the hugely popular social networking site MySpace.com has inspired envy among other media moguls, cited the example of Yahoo's HotJobs employment site, but noted that Internet users might go to any number of other Web destinations that also carry job listings.
Given his history, I wouldn't bet against him.
The one thing most certain to destroy a work of genre fiction is for the author to try to "transcend the genre."
You've heard of this many times, I'm sure, from the opposing point of view, as critics praise some author for transcending the genre in which they're working and thereby producing "a real novel."
That is hogwash.
The result of such endeavors is typically a poor example of both genre fiction and mainstream fiction. I won't name names here, but much of what has received the most critical praise in the mystery field qualifies strongly for this dubious distinction.
Read a few of the most recent Edgar Award winners if you want to be fully versed in the infamous results of authors thinking themselves superior to their audiences.
On this point Helen Szamuely has written a good book review for the website of the Social Affairs Unit in Great Britain. Noting the drab results produced by many writers trying to write "real novels" in the mystery genre, Szamuely writes:
I blame the critics, starting with Julian Symons and his seminal Bloody Murder. As the author of a number of extremely interesting detective novels himself Symons ought to have known better. But he and his many successors have been advocating the theory that the best detective story writers ought to go beyond the genre and write "real" novels. Symons, for example, who always prefers thrillers to detective stories, despite his own achievements, repeatedly shakes his head over someone like Ngaio Marsh failing to transcend the genre.
Transcending the genre is all very well but a good detective story is considerably more difficult to write than a sloppily constructed and written "real" novel. In fact, all that happens is that we get a romance with a little detection thrown in instead of a detective story, not a work of literature.
Szamuely is absolutely right to point to Symons and his Bloody Murder as a great offender in this matter. Symons and the American critic Otto Penzler have probably most powerfully and influentially represented the idea that the best kind of mystery novel is not a mystery at all and really not much of a novel, either .
Their intentions were and are good, I am sure, but their ideas are simply wrong.
Symons, Penzler, and their vast host of slavish followers praise what they call crime stories, which are narratives in which a crime is (perhaps) committed and the minds of the various characters are analyzed from a psychological point of view.
Hence, they are often not really narratives at all and hence not really novels at all.
The opposing point of view is that a novel is first and foremost a story, and that a mystery novel is first and foremost a story with a criminal mystery at the center.
This point should seem obvious to those uninitiated in the occult practices of modern literary criticism. It is obvious because it is true. As George Orwell noted, there are some things that are so silly that only an intellectual could believe them.
The notion that a novel without a real story at the center is the best kind of novel is precisely the kind of idiotic notion only an intellectual could believe.
For more on what a real mystery novel is like, read this.
As I wrote in The Weekly Standard a few weeks ago, the best way for Christians to affect Hollywood is not to protest but to go to more movies, make clear their love for the medium, and praise Hollywood for what it does right.
(Regular readers of this site and the author's other writings will know that I live by those words.)
Now Fox Entertainment is showing exactly how quickly and surely such a strategy can work. The LA Times reports:
In the biggest commitment of its sort by a Hollywood studio, News Corp.'s Fox Filmed Entertainment is expected to unveil plans today to capture the gargantuan Christian audience that made "The Passion of the Christ" a global phenomenon.
The home entertainment division of Rupert Murdoch's movie studio plans to produce as many as a dozen films a year under a banner called FoxFaith. At least six of those films will be released in theaters under an agreement with two of the nation's largest chains, AMC Theatres and Carmike Cinemas.
The first theatrical release, called "Love's Abiding Joy," is scheduled to hit the big screen Oct. 6. The movie, which cost about $2 million to make, is based on the fourth installment of Christian novelist Janette Oke's popular series, "Love Comes Softly."
The production costs for this film do not sound exactly stunning, but the picture is obviously an experiment and a way of gauging exactly what the market is for such films on a regular basis, as opposed to big-budget "event" films such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings series. That makes good business sense for Fox and is good for the Christian audience in that success will not be defined as huge box office grosses but by a much more modest standard:
FoxFaith films, to be based on Christian bestsellers, will have small budgets of less than $5 million each, compared with the $60-million average. The movies each will be backed by $5-million marketing campaigns. Although that is skimpy compared with the $36 million Hollywood spends to market the average movie, the budget is significant for targeting a niche audience, especially one as fervent as many evangelical Christians.
There appears to be a huge market out there for Christian programming, the LA Times story notes:
For instance, "The Passion" grossed $612 million worldwide, thanks in part to its appeal to Christians. Another spiritual odyssey, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," took in $745 million globally. Most recently, Christians came out for this summer's controversial "The Da Vinci Code," which has brought in $754 million worldwide.
The risk inherent in sending out a stream of low-budget films is that Fox will conclude that Christians will watch any kind of crud as long as it includes a scene in which a major character "accepts Christ into their life," which is what Christian fiction today all too commonly consists of. Fortunately, the studio seems to be after something quite different from that:
"A segment of the market is starving for this type of content," said Simon Swart, general manager of Fox's U.S. home entertainment unit."We want to push the production value, not videotape sermons or proselytize."
Aesthetic quality and an understanding of the subject matter will be essential to the plan's success:
"If this is something Fox is doing only to exploit the audience — or if it's something they don't believe in or are doing cynically — then there could be problems," said Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, a box-office reporting service. "There isn't a huge turnout for these films unless they speak to what Christianity is all about. People want a guide to life and Hollywood has ignored that by saying nothing or dwelling on vices."
It makes great business sense for Fox to pursue a new and strongly defined audience as movie box office intake has been decreasing in recent years:
Over the last four years, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has quietly built a network to mobilize evangelical Christian moviegoers in an era of diminishing box-office returns. The network includes 90,000 congregations and a database of more than 14 million mainly evangelical households.
Other studios are watching and considering whether to follow suit:
New Line Cinema's "The Nativity Story," scheduled to be released in December, tells the story of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter to give birth to Jesus. Legendary Pictures, which has a multi-film deal with Warner Bros., is planning to make a movie version of John Milton's epic 17th century poem about the fall of man, "Paradise Lost."
The latter sounds very interesting indeed, with its clear potential for grand drama and powerful visual imagery.
One hopes that Christians have learned—or relearned—that a customer has much more influence than a scold.
Microsoft is developing an online video-sharing service modeled after YouTube. The Seattle Times reports:
Hopping aboard one of the Internet's white-hot trends, Microsoft introduced a test version of an online video-sharing service Monday night, with hopes it will snatch users away from market leader YouTube and generate revenue through advertising.
Soapbox on MSN Video, released to a select group of test customers, is designed to allow anyone to upload and share original videos on the Web.
Microsoft hopes Soapbox will both enhance and benefit from its other Web services to gain an edge in the explosive user-generated video market.
"The key is going to be getting a lot of users," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "It's one of those services that becomes more useful as more people access it. The biggest challenge will be to get people to use [Soapbox] instead of YouTube or other services."
Microsoft has an existing audience of 465 million monthly users across its various Web properties and aims to integrate Soapbox with its blogging and instant-messaging services, among others.
To keep its ad-funded business growing, it needs not only to grow its audience but also expand each user's involvement with its services, said Rob Bennett, general manager of entertainment and video services for MSN.
This is part of the continuing trend of business giants and government to harmess the Internet, as noted earlier on this site, here, here, and elsewhere.
For the second time in the last month, a football film is the weekend's top box-office attraction. The Gridiron Gang, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, led the way in weekend receipts with an estimated total of $15 million.
The Gridiron Gang is another in a long line of sports movies that show how troubled individuals develop character by participating in sports, where excellence is the pursuit and achieving real, visible results is the only way to succeed.
An important aspect of these films is the leadership brought by a coach who has battles of his or her own to fight. Mentorship and the responsibility of each generation to train the next one are central concerns of such films.
Movies such as Invincible, The Replacements, Friday Night Lights, The Longest Yard, and The Ice Princess all pursue this approach, and the underlying concern is the same: redemption. As such, they can be quite moving despite their often formulaic story lines.
(In fact, a great deal of their power is the direct result of their formulaic nature, about which we will write more in due course.)
The Brian DePalma crime story The Black Dahlia brought in a lackluster $10 mil in its opening week, and attendance overall for the weekend was weak, off 12 percent from the week before.
The E! Online story attributes this to school being back in session and the large number of football games available to watch on TV. The first seems unlikely, given that in most places school started at least a couple of weeks ago, and few people attend classes on weekends (although some do actually do homework over the weekends).
The likely reason for the box office dropoff is the attraction of football. Several football games were in the top twenty rated TV shows last week, with NFL games at the 1 and 3 positions.
I think that's a good thing. If you're like most people, you'll get more enjoyment and learn more about life watching a football game than in watching most movies—and what you enjoy will be the pursuit of excellence and what you learn will be true.
If only more movies were like that.
The prizes have been awarded at the Toronto Film Festival, and as might have been expected, the Fipresci Prize, voted by an international panel of film critics, went to the political "snuff" film Death of a President. (See story here.)
The top award at the festival, however, went to Bella, a romantic drama by Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde. The People's Choice Award is voted on by festival audiences, and is describe by Reuters as often indicative of future Academy Award nominations.
Bella received little press attention during the festival, and its selection as best picture was described as a surprise.
The film, produced in the United States, tells the story of "two people whose lives converge and turn upside down on a single day in New York," according to Reuters. It is director Monteverde's first film.
In another manifestation of the trend of major media outlets using the internet to promote their programs, CBS has authorized yahoo.com to show the entire premiere episode of the new TV series Jericho, on demand on the web, commercial-free, for several days before it appears on broadcast television.
The program premieres on Wednesday, September 20, and until then you can see it on the Web here. The page also includes clips and promotions for other CBS shows premiering this fall.
The network's decision to show an important program on the Web before its broadcast debut appears to me a rather significant event in the development of the internet as a broad-based medium.
And in entertainment and aesthetic terms, the premierie episode of Jericho is well worth watching.
Artists in the twentieth-century increasingly operated on the insight that it is vain, stupid, and boring to paint a beautiful and emotionally moving portrait of a landscape or person or pieces of fruit or a scene from the Bible or a war fight or a group of local burghers gathered for their nightly guarding of the town, and that those who did so were captives of bourgeois values whose work spread false consciousness and destroyed souls (and by the way, there is no such thing as a soul).
This phenomenon has been well documented over the past couple of decades in books such as Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word and in the excellent culture magazine The New Criterion.
Of course, for most people the best response to such things is to ignore them and, when they cannot be avoided, ridicule them.
A Los Angeles art show this weekend shows that the anti-art, anti-bourgeois, anti-social art movement is still strong.
The show, called Barely Legal, is put on by Banksy, a British prankster and graffiti artist, whose work pushes what passes for serious art today into open absurdity. It is the reductio ad absurdum of modern art, which is not much of a reduction at all.
Unfortunately, the show is not meant to satirize the contemporary art world but is in fact simply a cheesy and self-consciously ludicrous manifestation of it.
Banko's installations have a clear "anti-capitalist" (in the words of the Reuters article quoted below), anti-bourgeois message. Too bad, for he really does seem to have an ability to create mildly amusing if decidely unimaginative faux contemporary art scenarios.
A live Asian elephant, painted in pink and gold, stands in a makeshift living room.
Giant cockroaches swarm over copies of Paris Hilton's pop CD. A dummy angel wearing a gas mask and a white parachute flaps in the blue skies.
Even in free-wheeling Los Angeles, they'd never seen anything quite like this.
British graffiti artist and prankster Banksy opened his first Los Angeles show on Friday in an obscure warehouse in industrial Downtown, bringing his subversive humor and anti-capitalist message to a city better known for wealth and self-obsession.
"Barely Legal," a free three-day event billed as a "vandalized warehouse extravaganza," opened with the excitement and puzzlement that has come to be the hallmark of the elusive "guerrilla artist."
Banksy keeps his identity secret but has built up a cult following in Europe over the last four years, placing his work in top museums, zoos or on the streets.
"It is really amazing. I think he is hilarious," said Los Angeles graphic designer Manny Skiles, 30, who has spent two years following Banksy's work mostly through the Internet.
Banksy's works show about the usual level of imagination evident in these contemporary art scenarios, which is to say, very little:
On one wall, a stencil art picture shows bush hunters in loincloths raising their spears at empty supermarket shopping carts. On another, a masked street anarchist with a thrown back arm prepares to hurl -- a bunch of flowers.
But the placid pink elephant takes pride of place. Tai, 38, looms large in a room decked out with a sofa, a television, rugs on the floor and a man and woman sitting reading obliviously on the couch. It is titled "Home Sweet Home."
"We are sitting on the couch not seeing her. From what I understand, the elephant is a symbol of all the world's problems being ignored," said Kari Johnson, Tai's caretaker. Johnson said Tai lives on a private southern California elephant ranch and has appeared in several commercials.
This is all highly reminiscent of much 1960s hippie "art." And the "artist's" politics are just as nuanced and deeply informed as those of his '60s prankster predecessors:
Banksy, as is his custom, was not around to discuss his show, which followed a prank at Disneyland this month in which he placed a blow-up figure dressed in orange Guantanamo Bay prison overalls beside a roller-coaster ride.
Last month, Banksy placed remixed copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD in stores across England. He gave them titles such as "Why Am I Famous?" and "What Am I For?"
In the "Barely Legal" show, the fake Hilton CDs are displayed in a plexiglass case alongside photo-shopped pictures of the hotel heiress and live cockroaches.
What this world needs is an installation that makes appropriate fun of all this nonsense. Banko could be just the one to do it, if he could only get past his own idological complacency. That, however, is one thing that he, like his contemporaries, appears unlikely to challenge.
James Pinkerton of Tech Central Station went all the way up to Toronto for the city's annual film festival this year, and he has brought back an excellent article on one of the most vivid manifestations of Bush hatred seen so far, the film The Death of a President. In an article appropriately and only slightly hyperbolically titled "Snuff Cinema," Pinkerton writes:
Five years after 9-11, it's apparent that we all aren't getting along. And the political left is throwing plenty of mean punches. A case in point is that new Bush snuff movie, "Death of a President." Some might say that "snuff movie" is too strong a term -- but how else to describe a movie that clearly revels in the prospect of George W. Bush's being assassinated? . . .
"Death" is a pseudo-documentary that purports to show what happens to America in the year after President George W. Bush is assassinated on October 19, 2007 (stock market nerds might note that 10/19/07 is the 20th anniversary of the 500-point stock market crash, for whatever symbolism that's worth).
A few points about the movie: First, it has a "big" look. As film-society types would say, "Death" is fluent in cinematic language; it brings one into the action, it's well paced, the music enhances the mood. Interestingly, the film was made for a mere $2 million; if so, such a large movie on such a small budget could only be possible for an offshoot of a big network, such as More4. The parent company, Channel 4, used its own deep resources to acquire archival footage and to help out on the slick special optical effects. So "Death" looks like a theatrical release, not a made-for-TVer.
Pinkerton sees extremely sinister motives at work here:
In the 12th century, King Henry II grew distinctly weary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket. "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" Henry asked, and the next thing he knew, four loyal knights did just the ridding Henry was hoping for. Now fast-forward nine centuries: Is it really all that hard to believe that the "Death" filmmakers hope that somebody gets a "bright idea" to rid the world of a troublesome president?
I have no reason to think that the film is an open call to action, but certainly on the symbolic, wish-fulfillment level it is a manifestation of a truly appalling level of hatred, well beyond even what President Clinton's most fevered opponents dared to express during the 1990s, and was made by a national television network, no less.
After the imagined murder of President Bush, the film posits an authoritian regime imposed by his sinister successor, current U.S. vice president Richard Cheney, whose administration promptly blames a Syrian-American for the murder and decides to invade Syria. (Just like real life!)
But the Syrian-American, although full of hatred, is not the killer, of course. [Note: plot spoiler ahead!] An African-American veteran of the 1991 Gulf War whose son was killed in the current War in Iraq is the real killer. And the film affirms the assassin's decision, Pinkerton writes:
The film, of course, suggests that the black man was justified—partially, if not fully—in what he did. As the man's wife explains, "He loved the Army, proud of serving America. . . . He felt that Bush destroyed all of that." So the cosmology—make that demonology—of the film is clear: Bush is so bad that even a loyal patriotic man is driven to kill the president. But the Cheney-ized feds aren't interested in this inconvenient truth, because they are intent on blaming the Syrian, and Syria.
The interesting angle here is that unlike many dramatic films about politics, this one depicts a real, living U.S. President currently serving in office (even superimposing Bush's face on an actor's body, through a cgi effect), when it would have been perfectly simple to provide a fig leaf by fictionalizing the President by at least giving him a different name. But they deliberately chose not to do that, in order to target Bush directly. Pinkerton writes:
And of course, the filmmakers, too, have a predetermined target: Bush. As producer Finch put it, "We would really engage people" by killing President George W. Bush onscreen, as opposed to just President John Q. Public.
Finch is right: When trying to drive home a point, it's always best to use specific images and proper nouns, if possible. Be vivid and lurid, that's the ticket. As vivid as the blood flowing from Bush's chest, and as lurid as the headlines that "Death" has already generated.
Finally, Pinkerton points out that the film is not intended to reach a big audience but only to inflame further the passions of anti-Bush fanatics:
Finch and Range know that vast majority of Americans won't like this film; even as they hope that a small minority of Americans will make it profitable for them. To make money, and to make a splash, they are willing to hurt American feelings.
The great irony, of course, is the idea that America is a heartbeat away from authoritarianism—when our domestic hatred of the sitting President is so open, unhinged, and accepted that even an endeavor such as this is already receiving spirited defenses in the media.
The rumors are flying, that the left-wing radio network Air America is about to shut down. The New York Post reports:
All-liberal, all-the-time Air America is denying intense rumors that the ratings-challenged radio network will declare bankruptcy this week and attempt to reorganize to stay on the air for the November elections.A high-level source told The Post that Rob Glaser, the Real Networks founder who rescued the 2-year-old network from its first financial crisis, "walked away last week" and took his moneybags with him.
Earlier this week, as first reported in The Post, Air America laid off six people and shuffled its on-air lineup - including deleting Jerry Springer and returning him to independent syndication.
Radio Equalizer, a blog that closely monitors Air America, claims the lefty net hasn't been able to pay its Associated Press bill and that staffers "have been bracing for the worst possible news."
Late yesterday, Air America spokeswoman Jaime Horn denied rumors of doom.
"If Air America had filed for bankruptcy every time someone rumored it to be doing so, we would have ceased to exist long ago," Horn told The Post. "No decision has been taken to make any filing of any kind."
I am regrettably rather late in mentioning the actor Brad Pitt's enlightening recent comment regarding why he has not yet married the acclaimed actress Angelina Jolie, a subject which he believes should have an important effect on the nation's political process.
USA Today reports the tragic, earth-shattering news:
Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.
I think he's referring to domestic animals here, but I'm not entirely sure, as he has neglected to provide specifics. In any case, let's get together and change the laws to Brad's liking so that he and Angelina can move in together and have kids and whatnot, OK?
It's little enough to ask a country to do, after all, for such an important person.
Numerous writers and analysts have pointed out that large media conglomerates' purchases of movie studios, magazines, and book publishing companies have had a deleterious effect on the quality of production in these media by forcing them to bring in higher profits than were historically attainable.
I suspect that the decline of American education has had a much more important effect on the quality of popular culture in the past half-century, but there were always two additional interesting questions regarding media conglomeration that needed to be asked and seldom were.
Question one was whether these two industries would remain as appealing to corporations as they had become during the 1970s and the two decades thereafter.
Question two was whether the decline in quality and increasing sameness of product from corporatized major publishers an