digital cinema

Michael Marino is the most recent person to review Reinventing Cinema, this time in the journal, Film & History. The review is generally positive, with Marino remarking that  ”Tryon’s book is generally interesting and well argued and it is clear he is an expert on this topic. The book does an excellent job outlining the evolution of the medium of film in the age of digital technology. This topic in turn speaks to wider themes related to the intersection of technology and society.” ... read more »

I’ve recently become intrigued by articles that attempt to depict the labor involved in some of the new video distribution models.  For a while, there was an entire genre of newspaper articles (here is one example) devoted to the behind-the-scenes operations at Netflix. ... read more »

Feeling a bit out of the loop because of the end of the semester, but here are some of the things I’ve been reading an watching over the last few days: ... read more »

There is a great discussion about the place of visual effects in the film industry that I stumbled across on Twitter.  I don’t have time to do justice to the nuances of the debate, but here are some highlights: ... read more »

Although I was critical of Edward Jay Epstein’s most recent book, The Hollywood Economist, one of the book’s undeniable strengths is its description of the complex, even labyrinthine, financing models that have evolved around the production of movies. ... read more »

There is a tendency in meta-industry books about Hollywood to promise that the author will reveal hidden truths about how the studio system (or multimedia conglomerates) operate, one that promises to take us beneath the artificial sheen and airbrushed glamor of the star system or the breathless accounts of box office records found in trade publications such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.  Given that Hollywood entertainment is predicated on spectacle, such approaches are tempting.  They have pervaded the ideological criticism found in academic journals for decades. ... read more »

Ever since Sigmund Freud insisted, a little too adamantly for my tatses–that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, we’ve all known that jokes often express unconscious desires or have some form of hidden meaning or purpose.  No surprise there.  And, ever since George Plimpton punked an entire nation of sports fans with stories of a Buddhist Met with a 163-mph fastball, the April Fools article has been a staple of contemporary jour ... read more »

Just a few quick links while I procrastinate on grading some papers: ... read more »

I’m still turning over some of the questions I’ve been considering lately about new distribution models for movies and television, in particular some of the “long tail” arguments that have suggested that affordable broadband will create a “celestial jukebox” that will provide us with essentially unlimited choice and convenience at a reasonable price. ... read more »

I’ve been spending the last few days recovering from and catching up after my trip out to California for SCMS, so I haven’t been able to follow some of the recent debates about new directions in film distribution as closely as I would have liked.  So consider this pot to be a quick recap and reflection on some of the conversations that are taking place.  These notes tend to ramble somewhat, and there isn’t really a thesis here, just an attempt to make sense of some of the ongoing discussions that have been taking place in recent weeks. ... read more »