Would You Pay $30 to Rent a Movie–For Two Days? A Month Before Its DVD Release? Didn’t Think So.
Thursday was the first day of an experiment in home entertainment that is likely to fail, at least the pricing element of it. You probably know that box office receipts and sales and rentals of DVDs are way down—as much as 40%–so the movie studios are looking at other ways to maximize their profits. Some of them banded together with satellite provider DirecTV to launch premium video on demand. The first offering: the Adam...
A Funny Thing, Or a Number of Them, Happened at the Comedy Awards
File this under the category of “Why didn’t we think of this before?” Twenty years in, Comedy Central inaugurated its first awards telecast Sunday night with its Comedy Awards, even as its corporate cousins MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon,TV Land and Spike have had successful kudocasts for years. Using that corporate synergy, the show was simulcast across a swath of those networks. Was it worth the wait? The show definitely...
On the Road with Paul: A Delightful Movie Journey
Sometimes, although not very often, it’s possible to go see a movie without knowing very much about it in advance — and walk out of the theater with a big smile on your face. That’s exactly what happened with “Paul,” the alien road trip movie from Brits Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. The two best friends and collaborators were responsible for “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” both genre...
A New Model for Movie Ticket Pricing
CinemaCon is going on in Las Vegas right now. What’s that, you say–something like Comic Con in San Diego? No, it’s a confab formerly known as ShoWest put on by NATO. Not the NATO that is currently taking over the reins of our mission to bomb out Moammar Kadafi and his forces in Libya. NATO stands for National Association of Theater Owners, and boy, do those people have us by the you-know-whats. Their latest move:...
You’ve Got the Talent, You Get the Prize! The PDC Honors 8 Groundbreaking Stars in the World of Design
The artistry of design across a multitude of disciplines, from architecture to interior to graphic, took center stage as the Pacific Design Center presented its 17th annual Stars of Design awards during WestWeek. Taking place at the somewhat hidden but worthy of finding Wolfgang Puck restaurant Red Seven, and emceed by PDC prez Charles Cohen, who is developing the new Red Building at the Blue Whale, the intimate awards dinner honored...
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