Monthly Archives: October 2012

Election media caught in bipolar trap

Election media caught in bipolar trap

 

THAT footage of Mitt Romney dismissing half the US electorate to a room full of wealthy donors that leaked last Monday may turn out to have been a signal moment of the campaign.But if you were watching Fox News that day you might not have known it happened. The conservative channel whose trademarked line “Fair and Balanced” is more taunt than slogan steered clear of the story until the following day, when it demanded to know why the “mainstream media” was not focusing on a video dug up by the conservative Drudge Report website revealing that in 1998 the then state senator Barack Obama favoured wealth redistribution.

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Why Netflix’s ‘House of Cards’ Is the Future of TV

CANNES – If its pitchmen are to be believed, House of Cards, the first drama series
commissioned by VOD service Netflix, is the future of TV.

Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, who star in the modern-day political drama, flew
into Cannes to hype the series, which Media Rights Capital is producing and Sony
Pictures Television is selling worldwide. Sony screened the first two episodes
of House of Cards to international buyers. Netflix will put all 13 episodes of the first
season online at once in February.

With a budget north of $100 million for the two, 13-episode seasons commissioned
by Netflix and with David Fincher on board as an executive producer – and director
of the first two episodes – House of Cards has the potential to either be a game
changer for the VOD business or a costly mistake for Netflix and its partners. The series is based on a BBC show of the same name from the 1990s which starred Ian
Richardson as an ambitious and ruthless British politician.

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Local filmmakers catch onto crowdfunding

Financing films using crowd funding is growing in Australia. It is hard to get
money for a feature if you have not yet made one.

Last week about 100 people gathered in a small studio in inner city Sydney to listen
to Andrew Masterson read excerpts from his novel The Second Coming. Director
David Barker and producer Angie Fielder also talked during the evening about how
they intended to make the 2001 Ned Kelly Crime Fiction Award winner into a film
noir murder mystery, and introduced actress Sarah Snook, who is set to be the film’s
femme fatale.

The Second Coming is about a man who believes he is Jesus and has to clear his
name after he becomes the prime suspect in a murder. It is hoped that the film
version will go into production in 2013.

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