Thursday, July 9, was "an important day for artists," according to Robert Chapman, attorney for film director, producer, and writer Francis Ford Coppola. On that day, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury imposed $60 million in punitive damages on <A HREF="http://www.wb.com">Warner Brothers,</A> the defendant in a lawsuit brought by Coppola.
Last week, <A HREF="http://www.nimbuscd.com">Nimbus CD International, Inc.</A> announced that it has produced a combined total of more than 3.5 million commercial DVD-Video and DVD-ROM discs since the launch of the format one year ago.
Yesterday, Japan; today, America; tomorrow, the world: <A HREF="http://www.disney.com">Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment</A> and <A HREF="http://www.wb.com">Warner Home Video</A> have signed a pact to distribute DVDs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Distribution of more than 100 titles to more than 30 regional territories will begin this fall. Studios to be represented include Warner, Disney, <A HREF="http://beta.choicemall.com/hollywoodpictures/">Hollywood Pictures</A>, and <A HREF="http://beta.choicemall.com/touchstone/">Touchstone Pictures</A>. Some independent films have also been picked up for distribution.
Your local mom-and-pop video store might be on its way to extinction because of pricing benefits offered to large chains, complained the Independent Video Retailers Group last week at the <A HREF="http://www.vsda.org/">Video Software Dealers Association</A> trade show and conference in Las Vegas. According to the independents, mass-market outlets like <A HREF="http://www.blockbuster.com">Blockbuster</A> are given an unfair advantage by movie studios eager to increase rentals by putting more copies of hit movies in stores.
You're finally on that plane to Tahiti, and you decide to check what's on for the in-flight movie. Oh-oh, they're running <I>Porky's: Part 12</I>, and you can barely even see the screen 23 rows ahead of you. Then you find the headphones---the type with two plastic tubes coming out of the armrest. Time to whip out some of your own DVDs, sit back with some high-quality headphones, and watch a couple of film versions of <I>Mutiny On The Bounty</I>---the Brando <I>and</I> Gibson varieties.
For the first few days in July, the engineering elite held forth at the posh Fairmont hotel in San Jose to discuss IEEE 1394. Also known as FireWire (Apple Computer), or I-Link (Sony), 1394 is being hailed as a "breakthrough technology for anyone in the world who uses a PC and a Television."
July 1, 1998---"These presentations always attract more Hollywood lawyers than engineers." That's how Dick Davies of the <A HREF="http://www.1394ta.com">1394 Trade Association</A> summed up Brendan Trawl's update on DVD Copy Protection issues at the second annual FireWire Developers' Conference last week in San Jose, CA.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a concert video in which the camera angle changes every three seconds, and during the charango solo we're shown a close-up of the vocalist drinking bottled water offstage. More than once I've wanted to reach through the TV and throttle the film editor. But if a recent announcement pans out, it could put camera control into the viewer's hands and bring a whole new meaning to the term "interactive television."
At the <A HREF="http://www.digitallivingroom.com/index.html">Digital Living Room</A> conference last week in Laguna Niguel, California, <A HREF="http://www.warnerbros.com">Warner Bros. Online</A> claimed that they have "blended DVD and Internet technology to simultaneously break through the online bandwidth barrier and create a completely new breed of entertainment." Not surprisingly, this DVD/web hybrid technology is called WebDVD.
M<I>ira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Alexander Goodwin, Giancarlo Giannini, Charles Dutton, Josh Brolin, Alix Koromzay, F. Murray Abraham. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 (letterbox). Dolby Digital 5.1. 105 minutes. 1997. Dimension Home Video 14251. Rated R. $ 29.99.</I>
Move over, fiber optics; good-bye, T1 lines. The unexploited potential of ordinary copper telephone wires will soon be mined by a consortium of computer and communications companies. Known as the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (or HomePNA), the recently formed group intends to deliver affordable, high-speed networking over existing phone lines.
With enthusiastic backing from the movie industry, DVD-Video is beginning a strong climb to widespread popularity. More than 3000 titles could be available by the end of 1998, which is four times the number available in 1997, the format's first year.
Last week, the <A HREF="http://www.afionline.org/">American Film Institute</A> (AFI) commemorated the first 100 years of American movies by officially announcing their prestigious list of the 100 greatest films of this century, as determined by a "blue-ribbon" panel of more than 1500 members of the American film community. In a nationally televised broadcast, "AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movies," Orson Welles' classic <I>Citizen Kane</I> claimed the No.1 position.
On June 17, <A HREF="http://www.unitymotion.com/unity/home.asp">Unity Motion</A> announced an agreement with <A HREF="http://www.turner.com/">Turner Engineering</A> under which Turner will supply high-definition television (HDTV) broadcast-engineering expertise to Unity Motion, which this year begins transmitting multiple channels of HDTV via satellite to subscribers in the US. In addition, Unity Motion announced that it will broadcast the first national satellite-based HDTV signal in the US on June 23-25.