Sony announced that optical disk manufacturing operations, including Blu-ray, are expected to resume around the end of May, and magnetic tape manufacturing operations are expected to resume around the end of July. Sony Chemical & Information Device Corporation’s Tagajyo Plant in the port city of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture was badly damaged in the March... »

Arts lovers should keep "tax day" in 2011 in mind for a great way to help the arts in the Golden State. Californians can now directly contribute to the California Arts Council through their annual tax refunds to advance the arts and arts education. The 2010 tax return form from the Franchise Tax Board... »

Sony sent a letter to its broadcast and professional distributors earlier this week warning of upcoming shortages of physical media as a result of the recent magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami that devastated northern Japan. “The earthquake resulted in severe damage at one of Sony’s key production facilities very near the epicenter in... »

This year’s awards season kicked off with a healthy raft of contenders vying for attention, but no clear front runners expected to sweep up, making it difficult for pundits to read the tea leaves – unlike last year, where two odds-on favorites – Avatar and The Hurt Locker – overshadowed all others. James Franco... »

ARRI announced that the new ALEXA camera is now shipping. Initial delivery priority is being given to customers who purchased the D-21 camera when it was unveiled at IBC 2009, and the company reports that production is being ramped up to meet the pent-up demand. »

Kodak announced the addition of two new films to its VISION3 family of motion picture products. The stock additions include a medium-speed, tungsten-balanced color negative camera film, and a color intermediate film optimized to work with digital postproduction technologies. “These new VISION3 films are the tangible results of our ongoing commitment to filmmakers,” says... »

Montreal-based Oblique FX recently completed all of the visual effects for Ben Hur – a new two-part miniseries that revisits the Charlton Heston classic tale of a man betrayed and sold into slavery by his friend. »

Nominees for the 82nd Annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards were announced early this morning, and it came as little surprise that James Cameron’s wildly successful sci-fi blockbuster, Avatar scored big in both above- and below-the-line categories. The stereoscopic film, which recently surpassed Titanic as the highest grossing film of all... »

740 Sound Design has opened a new audio postproduction facility and added mixing to its sound design services. The expansion enables the company to move into television, digital media and select documentary films in addition to the commercial work it has done for a decade. The facility is also enabling 740, which previously shared... »

Digital Vision has partnered with CineForm as a key element of its forthcoming Nucoda 2009.1 release. The new color grading/DI software, which will be unveiled at Broadcast Video Expo in London, Feb. 16-18, will include native support for the CineForm RAW format used by Silicon Imaging’s highly acclaimed SI-2k camera. “Following a popular industry... »