betamax Tagged Articles at Cinematical
RIP: Reel Important People -- May 19, 2008
Filed under: Obits »
Rosario Prestopino (1950-2008) - Makeup Artist, Special Effects Artist. Worked on Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fuci's Zombie, City of the Living Dead, The Black Cat, The New York Ripper and The New Gladiators, as well as Lamberto Bava's DemonsDemons 2, Dario Argento's Terror at the Opera, Michele Soavi's The Church, Philip Haas' Up at the Villa and Mario Girolami's Zombie Holocaust. He died of a heart attack May 13, in Rome. (IMDb)
- Danton Burroughs (1944-2008) - Chairman of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Handled licensing of properties created by his grandfather, Edgar Rice Burroughs, to films, television and other media. We can probably thank him for such adaptations as Disney's animated Tarzan and the studio's upcoming John Carter of Mars. He died of heart failure May 1, in Tarzana, California. (Variety)
- Carlo Colombaioni (c.1933-2008) - Clown. A favorite of Federico Fellini's, he acted in and advised on circus sequences directed by the filmmaker. He contributed to Fellini's La Strada, The Clowns, Amarcord, Roma and Casanova. He also appears in Claude Goretta's The Wonderful Crook and Yvan Le Moine's The Red Dwarf. He died May 16 in France. (Telegraph)
- Warren Cowan (1921-2008) - Publicist. Legendary in Hollywood, he co-founded PR firm Rogers & Cowan and represented Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and the Doors, among others. He also pioneered the idea of independent Oscar campaigns, beginning with the push for Joan Crawford's performance in Mildred Pierce, for which she ended up winning the Best Actress trophy. Recent films for which he's credited as unit publicist include The Secret Agent, Shade, Metroland and One Man's Hero. He died of cancer May 14, in Los Angeles. Read Valerie Van Galder's (President of Marketing at Sony) moving tribute to Cowan over at MCN. (LA Times)
Follow-Up: Cablevision Counter-Sues Hollywood
Filed under: Disney », Paramount », Universal », Tech Stuff », 20th Century Fox », Home Entertainment »
Last week, I reported that four movie studios are suing Cablevision over copyright issues regarding the cable company's planned DVR service. Now Cablevision has filed a counter-suit to defend itself, claiming that the service is protected by the ruling in the Sony Betamax video case. In case you don't remember, or are too young to have heard, Sony was sued by Universal and Walt Disney 30 years ago over their Betamax machines. The case went for many years and Sony eventually won in 1984, although by that time it had lost the video format war to VHS. Anyway, Cablevision is claiming their service is no different than a home video recorder, or VCR. The studios original suit claims the difference is that Cablevision's customers will not be storing the video data in their homes. Imagine if Sony hadn't won their case and not only were we never able to rent videos, but Hollywood never built the billion-dollar business they now depend on. I think that looking back, the studios should reconsider further attempts to hinder the advances of entertainment technology. Video-on-Demand and Digital Video Recorders are the future, whether Hollywood likes it initially or not.
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