by Shane “Master Blaster” Hnetka
Holy crap! Did you see the new Mad Max: Fury Road trailer that debuted at the San Diego Comic Con? It looks, well, like a Mad Max movie: messed-up cars and messed-up people in a dusty, grimy, messed-up future. It looks awesome. Can’t wait for May of next year.
Out Foxing The Fox, Or How I Stopped Warnering And Learned To Love The Merger
Rupert Murdoch, owner of corporate media giant Fox and real-life James Bond villain, wants to buy/merge Time Warner with 20st Century Fox. A few weeks back he made an $80 billion offer, but was shot down. Good. Still, from the looks of it, current Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes is looking to sell. Over the last couple of years, Bewkes has spun-off several divisions of Warner including, most recently, Time Inc., to make it more appealing to buyers. So why did he say no to Murdoch? I assume he just wants a little more money for his corporation.
If not Murdoch, somebody will buy Warner in the near future. So what does this mean for the film industry? For starters, the big six Hollywood studios would be reduced to five. Second, Time Warner has been a publicly traded corporation for a long time, while Fox is primarily owned and run solely by Murdoch and his family. Time Warner shareholders won’t have the same voice under the Fox banner as they used to have.
At the end of the day, is it good for the industry to have one larger film studio? I don’t know, but I do know that Marvel/Disney can’t be too happy about Fox merging with their competition/archenemies while Fox still has some of Marvel’s properties (X-Men, Fantastic Four).
One more thing: this merger would make Fox the biggest media conglomerate on Earth. Murdoch says he does plan to sell CNN off though; he already has Fox News to do his evil bidding.
The Best Little Video Store
I’ve shopped for movies in Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Calgary recently, and weirdly enough, the best place — for classic movies, foreign films; the kind of stuff I look for — ended up being the Barnes and Noble in… Minot, North Dakota.
Why on Earth a small town in the middle of a large farming community has the best Criterion Collection selection I’ve ever seen has me baffled. But at least I know where to buy now.
Shane Hnetka is a Regina film and comic book nerd. He also writes Dog Blog’s weekly “Sunday Matinee” column at prairiedogmag.com.