Page 2 - Andy Marken News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Yeah, been there … done that … don’t want to do it again! It has been a sucky time for everyone in the M&E ecosystem – studios, content owners, producers/directors, crew, distributors, channel folks and consumers. But, as bad as the pandemic “was,” the industry overcame a ton of obstacles and made some tremendous advances. You can almost say the creation of visual stories is better because of it. As someone observed, “The pandemic actually helped (forced) the industry to move from the C.B. DeMille era to the George Lucas era.” Since the Gloria Swanson days, the industry has...

Outbreak and Contagion last year, but no one really took this whole pandemic thing serious until mid-to-late March when Tom Hanks announced he and his wife, Rita Wilson, tested positive for COVID-19 while he was in Australia filming an Elvis Presley biopic. Suddenly, people were saying, “Holy S*** this stuff is real…and serious!” At about the same time, folks around the globe were sent home to work, wherever and however. BAM! studios went dark, borders were closed.   With the exception of reality and late-night TV, entertainment production was in a deep freeze … paralyzed. Box off...

Let’s see, the pandemic made us shut-ins. The fires (here in California) showed us what the apocalypse was going to look like with the red/orange clouds. Then, what the post life was going to be with grey clouds of smoke, fog, crud. Counter culturist Timothy Leary was right, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” People in every country, state/province, city/town had to give up the normal stuff they do – eat out, catch a ballgame, go to a movie. Suddenly, they were rediscovering every nook, cranny of their home.   So, with typical enabler encouragement … everyone’s doing it, a friend of...

Content Insider Special – Virtual CES 2 Chips are important… DUH, but there’s more to CES than present/future technology. There’s also the practical side for home and the office. While chips are in everything today, most of us feel the first place to experience them is in productivity, personal tools.   At CES, the work/play/communicate device makers were at their best and compute, notebook folks rolled out so many outstanding devices that picking faves wasn’t easy. We zeroed in on the Dell Latitude 9420 and 24-, 27- or 34-inch video conferencing monitor (it’s all in the budget)...

— Edward R. Murrow, “ ,” Warner Independent Pictures, 2005 Between the pandemic and M&E heavy hitters/wanna bes racing to capture their unfair share of the new consumer entertainment pot of gold, people at every level have been busy refreshing their resumes.   You can almost smell the fear, smell the blood. Theaters are struggling with their reopening and talking hot/heavy to remain relevant. Content producers/aggregators are checking their cellphone directories to see if numbers are still active.   Studios and networks wonder if they’re coming to the streaming table to eat or be ...