CONVERGENCE Scream franchise moves to MTV

UPDATE: Another iconic horror franchise has moved to TV after years of speculation about a movie reboot. Bruce Campbell's counter-culture icon Ash is strapping on the chainsaw and chopping out cheesy one-liners once more ... on the 'small screen' (there's a term that feels a little odd these days!).

NB: the trailer embedded in the following is VERY gory. Nice to see alcohol brands sidestepping regulations prohibiting the targeting of youths by placement with online trails for a 15-24 (substantial older secondary audience notwithstanding) show, Jack Daniel's king bed ad in this case.
http://bloody-disgusting.com/videos/3352696/ash-vs-evil-dead-trailer-premiere-sdcc/

UPDATE2: Horror TV series (NB: 18-rated) Hannibal has been cancelled after 3 seasons by its US network ... and may continue as a feature film.
http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3352934/hannibal-continue-feature-film/

An immensely successful franchise that launched a new wave of ironic, parodic, postmodern 90s slashers (Scary Movie used Scream's original working title and directly parodied the entire plot - legal as both were Dimension Films productions), Bob Weinstein claims that it has permanently exited the big screen.

Note his explanation, a bit of a bombshell coming from a key player in Indie cinema globally - TV is where the teen audience are.

That's a great, short quote to wield in an essay!

I agree with the writer that it's highly unlikely that Scream won't return to the cinema as a remake or sequel, but that's a hell of a sign of the uncertainty facing the industry. Lets not forget either that TV also faces a crisis from digital disruption!

http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3350829/will-scream-5/

CONVERGENCE Smartphone and DSLR converging?

It seems so...
This is fairly new technology; Sony has been an early adopter, but a new rival has eschewed Wi-Fi connection for a physical, cabled link to the iPhone, removing the lag and unreliability of Wi-Fi, bringing the immense processing power of contemporary smartphones to play as a controller for a separate lens that's far beyond any integrated cameras at this time.

http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/cameras/dxo-s-new-plug-in-camera-turns-your-iphone-into-a-dslr-nearly--1297226

F for Feminist rating?

Not recent news, but just encountering this now by clicking through a few times from an article in today's paper' ... on about the 5th article in, spotted this...

Bath Film Festival had added an additional F rating to 17 of the 42 films it was screening, denoting a strong female influence as lead actor, director or writer (primarily, other times were considered too).

Many of these would easily fail the Bechdel Test!

Given just how bad the industry is overall in representing femalekind, or giving influential behind the camera roles to women, I have to wonder what impact this might have if the BBFC took it up. You could ask yourselves which of the films we study would rate this.

Ideas can rarely be viewed in simple black or white, good or bad terms though ... Bridget Jones' Diary, with its female director, original writer (of the novel) and lead would certainly get this rating ... but its at best questionable whether this is a positive representation of women.

Bath film festival goes Wild with F rating for feminist films
Here's another intriguing one - a female only audience stipulation refused by a cinema -
Centre cancels 'illegal' women-only screening of film by Jewish director.

DISTRIBUTION Will Netflix kill the theatrical window?

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/jun/05/the-film-distributors-association-has-turned-100-so-whats-the-current-life-expectancy-for-cinematic-releases

BBFC: YouTube resources

Rather than add yet another links list, I'll embed various vids I've been looking at here.
Naturally, as censorship is the subtext of many, you need to be aware that some will contain strong language and/or explicit imagery, so consider where you're viewing any of these, being mindful of younger students in particular.

I did a simple 'BBFC' search on YouTube; I've only looked at the first few results pages (so far) - if you come across any useful additions, please pass on the link as a comment.


Interview with a BBFC 'Examiner'/Censor
The BBFC's use of language is questionable, and Foucault/Fairclough would certainly recognise their attempts to control and define the discourse through changing the 'C' to classification from censorship, and re-naming censors 'examiners'.
Anyway, this is an interview with A BBFC 'examiner', Emily Fussell.


History of the BBFC Part 1
There doesn't appear to be a part 2; a fellow busy Media teacher created this.


'Ramblaholic' on Tesco withdrawing a DVD (Hospital) after complaints
A talking head vodcaster, he's not as libertarian as the MelonFarmers site, but still largely critical of censorship.

You can also find him here having his say on a 2014 BBFC report which suggested a tougher regime for horror.

VSC's BBFC and PEGI Training Video for Retailers
Another great example of the impact of digitisation! The BBFC have been increasingly open and made much more publicly accessible ever since James Ferman eventually stepped down, but I don't recall seeing this on their site!


Die Hard With a Vengeance (2009): The cuts to receive a 15

**clearly an example of 18-rated material**

This is useful as an example of the impact of digitisation; it wouldn't take much effort/wit to get round the BBFC's cuts (to be fair, the cuts the distributor made to get a more commercially favourable rating!) with videos such as this available.


Cheshire Cats Studio: BBFC/MPAA/Bechdel Ratings are ... bad
Some strong language used.
I've only skimmed this so far; a panel discussion largely presented as a Flash animation, and clearly not in favour of the ratings systems! With 21k views, another useful example of the impact of digitisation?

GoAnimate Video on the classifications
Haven't viewed yet...


Video Nasties 1hour doc
**features strong, explicit material**
This is very useful, but is clearly intended for a mature audience, so caution!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJst2A2gx8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wit2OpjaqgM

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjGPvOV3wv4