As the new year begins, I’m going to pick up where I left off last month, discussing another media platform that is being prematurely written off by the pundits—Twitter.
For years, when I’ve discussed social media in my Business of Film class at Columbia, I have been surprised at how few of my students pay any attention to Twitter. When I quiz them further, it seems that the reason they are not on the platform is that they’ve been scared by what they’ve heard about the toxic environment they are told exists in Twitter. This, of course, was long before the takeover by Elon Musk, which has now created a narrative that is scaring even existing users away.
With Musk allowing some previously banned people back on the platform, and messing around with various ways to increase revenue, fear of Twitter has people predicting its demise and scaring users into abandoning it. Here are some reasons why I think we should all stick it out—and perhaps more controversially, why folks who have never used it should get started now. Continue reading “Premature Obituaries Part 2: The Case For Twitter”
I ran into an exhibitor friend at the Toronto Film Festival (who shall remain nameless) and he went off about how unhappy he was about having signed a VPF deal in order to convert his theaters to Hollywood’s version of digital projection equipment. We talked about all the various implications of the deal, which I’ve outlined in a 
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I simply don’t do Apple. I’m not going to go into all the reasons here because today I want to rant about another company, HP.
Warning: This post is only for complete gadget freaks, of which I am admittedly one.
About 5 or so months ago, 
Ever since I joined forces with my partners Barry Rebo and Giovanni Cozzi to form Emerging Pictures, one of our goals was to use the new digital technologies to revive the idea of the neighborhood repertory cinema. At first, there was a lot of resistance…from filmmakers and from theater owners, both of whom were still married to the 35mm format. Over time, that resistance has worn down, as both filmmakers and theater owners began to realize the economic benefits of leaving 35mm behind. But perhaps more importantly, as they began to experience it in a theater, they realized that the compromise in picture quality was very minimal, and was compensated for by not having the degradation that goes along with running 35mm through a projector. The image was the same in week 3 as it was in week 1. It was the same in Oklahoma City as at the Zeigfeld. 
In the last few months, it seems to have become common wisdom that traditional print media is in its death throes. According to every expert, all media is moving to the web. Yet you wouldn’t know it by looking at me. As somebody who works in the media, I’ve always considered that part of my job is to know what is going on the world…especially and specifically in the world of pop culture. On a daily basis, I read the New York Times, Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter. Every week, I read New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Weekly Variety, Entertainment Weekly, Screen International, Video Business and The New York Observer. And I also subscribe to Film Comment and several monthly tech magazines. I figure that single-handedly, I’ve killed a large number of trees in my lifetime.