Ever since film critic Andrew Sarris foolishly championed the auteur theory in this country, directors have had more power anyone else in Hollywood. Want proof? Check out this capsule description in a bulletin I got from the Hollywood Reporter today.

The DGA has accomplished in six days what the WGA hasn’t in six months: secured a [...]

You’re at home, trying to enjoy your new post-2009-ready digital TV. But what you’re seeing is something like slow-motion crash test footage. The major networks are slowly– excruciatingly slowly– being crunched into shapelessness by the WGA strike. Sure, “American Idol” is back on (and you’re welcome to it), and God help us the revived [...]

Box Office Weekly #101 (MP3 - 17 MB - 24 min)
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In today’s show, weekend box office figures, TV ratings and these stories: Apple offers downloadable movies with built in self-destruct mechanisms… the writers strike causes rich people to be fired by even richer people… and in this week’s commentary Skot looks at the phenomenon [...]

Unlike Daniel, I did not bother watching what was left of the Golden Globes award-announcing telecast thingy. I was instead on good ol’ Fox, watching the premiere of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” Gotta admit, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t exactly excellent television, but it had impressive effects, fairly lean (if lazily motivated) plot [...]

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an awards show as much as I enjoyed last night’s Golden Globes “press conference.” Stripped of the usual bloat, they still managed to squeeze 10 minutes of information into an hour long show, but it’s a definate efficiency boost from the usual 4 hours. So what’s to love?

Hosts. The [...]

The long interruption of the holidays behind us, I checked in with Chip and the gang in Santa Cruz to see how the cut of “Arrangements” is coming along. Turns out there is lots and lots happening!
I’m going to turn it over to Chip Street for the new (and amazing) details.
Today [January 13, 2008] we [...]

Box Office Weekly #100 (MP3 - 14 MB - 20 min)
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In today’s show, weekend box office figures, TV ratings and these stories: CBS finds a perfect solution to the writer’s strike problem, unless you have cable… England proposes to decriminalize something everybody already does anyway… and in this week’s commentary I celebrate the cancellation [...]

I swear, I just saw Snoop Dogg say this, talking to reporters about the cancellation of the Golden Globes:
The writers should be compensated - I mean, they’re people too.
This is a surprisingly elusive truth in Hollywood. They both are elusive truths. Runteldat, Doggy-Style!

Everybody has been asking, what good is this writer’s strike doing? Unless you’re lucky enough to have David Letterman for a boss, you’ve been out of work for two months, forced instead to picket production companies in the dead of winter. Meanwhile the big media companies are seeing profits roughly equal to what they were [...]

Is HD-DVD dead? Yes and no, according to Gizmodo. Let’s put it another way - probably yes. But the Giz people interviewed DongSoo Jun, who is Executive VP and General Manager of Samsung’s Digital AV Division, and he thinks there is still a use for Skot’s new HD-DVD player.
It will become the chosen format [...]