The Blanton Museum of Art
"...As the quality and quantity of television grows, the ways for a show to succeed has also increased. On Saturday, the ATX Television Festival hosted a panel to debate the merits of the devoted niche vs..."
"...While Netflix and Hulu may be reigning supreme as far as internet bandwidth goes, there is a wide array of niche streaming sites that cater to people who are perhaps looking for something outside the realm of Adam Sandler films and episodes of Chopped. The Chronicle Screens team has curated some offerings to take care of some people on your holiday list..."
"...Like Murrow and Morris before them, both filmmakers find themselves deeply interested in niche communities around the country, and both have an incredible eye for such spaces. Williams and Duffy were among the first to notice, but hardly the last – at Sundance, Bresnan and Lucas attended a filmmaker's luncheon with Werner Herzog they described as "a most amazing encounter." Herzog spoke with them one-on-one for an hour, ignoring hangers-on..."
"...We don't want to create the news, we want to cover it." Other members of Austin's black publishing community declined to comment on their new competitor and/or didn't know anything about Walker and Hernandez. But reading the Times quickly reveals that they are not simply trying to squeeze one more paper into a niche that is already filled...."
"...Now we're on the trail of the mystery of Fracasso's missing audience. The music world has become the land of niche marketing..."
"...With her style of books no longer fashionable (a recent Estée Lauder bio has flopped badly), she’s behind in her rent, can’t pay her vet bill, and only has money to spend on a serious drinking habit. By chance, she finds two typewritten notes signed by vaudevillian Fanny Brice in a library book, and discovers there’s a niche market for the letters of deceased authors and showbiz notables..."
"...After a gnarly accident involving her deck and her crotch gets the introverted 18-year-old skate rat Camille (the excellent Vinberg) banned from skating by her overprotective single mother (Rodriguez), she clandestinely hooks up with the Skate Kitchen posse and discovers the joys (and pains) of female solidarity in a sport long dominated by misogynistic Thrasher bros. That’s about the extent of the borderline generic coming-of-age plot, but exploring the niche subculture of this interracial, pansexual band of outsiders in all its mundane detail makes for a surprisingly sweet film...."
"...In this niche-targeted film, Grace (Michalka) is in a successful Christian music group with Johnny Trey, her father (Denton). She has a beautiful, powerful voice, and also plays guitar and piano..."
"...Kiss’ face paint is now black metal’s corpse paint, and even if album sales aren’t analogous, the latter’s stranglehold on youthful (and hoary) headbangers amplifies no less loudly. Until the Light Takes Us matches its subject, equally inscrutable though no less niche-oriented..."
"...(It also, at times, borders on the non sequitur.) Apatow has, in the past few years, become a cottage industry unto himself, a postmillennial John Hughes, but with little (so far) of the increasingly strident precocity that Hughes evinced as his career devolved from the great (The Breakfast Club) to the banal and beyond (Baby's Day Out, the Home Alone films). Forgetting Sarah Marshall, despite its instantly forgettable title, is the perfect vehicle for Segel, who thus far hasn't really found a comic niche to call his own..."
"...This hopeful and buoyant film about residents of an “active adult” retirement community in Florida finding new love does not initially seem like the film one might expect from the tapped-into-the-zeitgeist director of Desperately Seeking Susan, Smithereens, and the pilot episode of Sex and the City. Yes, the film has a certain niche-market appeal, but it’s a movie for anyone who enjoys a solid romantic comedy..."
"...While scads of this English industrial town's residents depend on the company for their livelihood, it's equally clear that globalization has knocked them clear out of the running. Prodded by felicitous tomboy (and soon-to-be love interest) Lauren (Wonderland's Potts), Charlie discovers a bountiful niche market when he teams up with black transvestite Lola (Ejiofor), whose cross-dressing London cabaret is desperately in need of the titular, saucy footwear that's difficult to fine in a size 12EEE..."
"...Comedian Mo’Nique’s first starring film vehicle, Phat Girlz, suffers from a bad case of undernourishment. Not that the movie doesn’t serve up heaping amounts of fat jokes, or that it doesn’t deliver targeted gags for an underserved niche audience – fat women..."
"...Frankly, I can think of no higher praise. The rest of the film, involving a barrage of hit-or-miss gags running the gamut from “old gals mistaking pot for tea and getting stoned” (hit) to “oddball African Bushman showing up with lion” (miss) and self-obsessed Matrix wannabe doing the robot (hit, then many, many misses), is trashy, niche-marketed fun..."
"...Admittedly, it’s fun to see the Rock going all gushy-eyed over a piece of weapons hardware (the formidable BFG; you can probably figure out the acronym on your own), and Doom also scores highly with its nonstop cavalcade of creepy critters (hellspawn or not), including one downright vile imp that looks like an albino manatee crossed with an In-Sink-Erator. (Finally, I know what my dog’s going to dress up as on Halloween night.) There’s no character development to speak of because there are no real characters, just the living and the dead and the soon-to-be-dead (or undead), and in the end Doom is so niche-marketed to gamers that it might as well not be considered a film at all: It’s a marketing tie-in, albeit one with some exceptional production values..."
"...That said, this narrative re-creation of Peralta’s doc, from his own script and directed by Thirteen’s Catherine Hardwicke, is a blast, as accurate as it ought to be with more than enough mythology thrown in for good measure. It’s the story of a ragamuffin group of friends – Stacy Peralta (Robinson); Tony Alva (Rasuk); Jay Adams (Hirsch); Sid (Angarano); and their Fagan, Zephyr Surfboards owner Skip Engblom (Ledger) – who saw a niche one drought-ridden SoCal summer and filled it with urethane wheels and scrawny little plastic skateboard decks..."
"...This ain’t your little brother’s animé. Well, it could be, potentially: But for a few violent moments and some harsh language, Tokyo Godfathers is the kind of old-fashioned, all-ages entertainment Hollywood used to churn out in live-action form before the era of niche marketing, when a good story sold a film..."
"...Davis adds a classy note as the father of Derrick's girlfriend, making the most of his limited screen time, but Santiago (debuting here as the girlfriend) can't do much with her bland “good woman” role, despite an engaging camera presence. Nonetheless, the film probably has enough polish and goodwill to give it niche appeal...."
"...Starring: Angelica Torn, Valerie Geffner, Victor Argo, Austin Pendleton, Robert Modica, Louise Lasser, Jamie Harris and Anna Thomson. After carving out a little niche with gritty character studies like Fiona and Sue, Israeli-born writer-director Amos Kollek essays a breezy New York romance, with those crisscrossing slice-of-life storylines so typical of tales of the city..."
"...Starring: Romeo Fabian, Jed Allan, Jeremy Williams, Patricia Manterola, Michael Nouri and Carman. Talk about your niche marketing … Christian filmmaking seems to be all the rage these days -- or at least it looks that way from deep down here in the Bible Belt..."
"...Like The Brothers McMullen, Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire was made on a minuscule budget and made the rounds as a festival darling prior to its release. Young men searching for both their occupational niche in life and their one true love has long been fertile ground for aspiring filmmakers..."
"...Despite these flaws, Dog Park has moments both humorous and tender, although hardly enough to recommend it. All those talented Kids in the Hall alums seem to be fighting to find their niche years after their classic comic troupe disbanded, but McCulloch seems to be losing the battle..."
"...Starring: Connie Nelson and Dee Hennigan. I've known so many gay people who are reduced to honking, snuffling emotional wreckage by the most saccharine hetero romance films that one has to wonder: Why are same-sex love stories viewed as exotic or inaccessible by most straight viewers? Julia Dyer's slyly engaging low-budget film about love between two unglamorous, fortyish women strains mightily against this arbitrary niche-market stigma with an appealing blend of charm, humor, and subversive appropriation of classic romance-movie imagery..."
"...Movies get made for all kinds of reasons, many having little or nothing to do with art. Selena, for example, falls into the specialized niche of Validator Films -- movies primarily designed to help audiences re-experience crucial life events (often retrofitted with gauzy mythical trappings), thereby reassuring themselves that everything was truly as vivid and meaningful as they remember..."
"...Whereas Alex Proyas' original Crow took great pains to weave a wholly thematic, wholly nouveau gothique tapestry, one that complemented the film alongside Graeme Revell's lushly tribal score, City of Angels is a scattershot collection of alterna-metal and Top-40 near-misses. It's this kind of rush job, market-niche attitude that nails the film to its chintzy balsa-wood cross..."
"...Consequently, it's sometimes uneven and jumpy. Yet this multi-national production creates characters and situations that manage to carve a memorable niche in the American geography...."
"...Teary melodramas involving the endurance and purity of true love despite the presence of an untimely death often translate into profits at the box office because, let's face it, audiences occasionally want a good cry at the movies. And now, screenwriter Rubin (who wrote the script for the tearjerker hit Ghost) seems to be trying to carve a niche for himself as an auteur in this genre of films and gearing them especially for the thirty-to-forty-something set..."
"...Sadly, it's not likely there will be much of an audience to applaud these teens' efforts. Alan & Naomi occupies that difficult niche, the classy children's film..."
"...The Brooklyn, NY-based company Factory 25 describes itself as a distributor of "indie niche projects." Further aiming to travel any road but the middle, the distributor states that both high- and low-concept films and music have a home at the label. A new Austin Film Society series spotlights three of the company's films...."
"...The Net is radically transforming much of our world, and few industries have been impacted as heavily as journalism. Thus far, the sector of journalism scrambling hardest to find a niche on the Net is the daily paper. That could change soon, of course -- as online video and audio technologies improve, which they are doing rapidly, television and radio will have to move aggressively to capitalize on new opportunities presented by the Internet..."
"..."We thought there was a niche," says Sara Trexler, 101X (KROX-FM) program director, before correcting herself. "Not a niche, but there was a hole in the market in terms of having alternative music that was not mixed with either classic rock or heavy, heavy urban dance kind of stuff, and was specifically for this sort of generation format...."
"...Central Market's demographic profile is a retailer's dream: The shoppers fit nicely into the disposable income market niche, giving rise to rumors that the prototype store pulls in about $1 million per week in sales. The store generally appeals to higher-end shoppers -- many of them ex-hippie baby boomers who once fit the profile of the Wheatsville customer..."
"...Eat the Niche "Doing what we're doing is a little more complicated than it appears on the surface," maintains Jason Enright, former co-owner of Jupiter Records. What Jason's doing, with his brother Ryan, is opening a music store for local music downloads (iTunes for Austin, so to speak) called "Jupiter Brothers."..."
"..."That's the moment when Tugg clicked for me," Kelley notes. He'd caught the video gaming documentary at the 2011 Austin Film Festival, and while he knew it would have a wide audience, it was still niche enough that it would be a tough sell..."
"...Until the advent of Deja News, there had been neither a vehicle for archiving or searching these Usenet posts because the process of storing that much information took up far too much disk space. By creating the proprietary software to operate, maintain, and search a database as large as Usenet, Deja News founder Steve Madere has not only discovered an uncharted Internet niche but has created and seemingly held on to Deja News' self-appointed title as "The Source For Internet Newsgroups."..."
"...The massive success of Broly caught everyone off-guard (I had several conversations with film journalists and even theatre managers who were baffled why theatres were adding screens in the second week). It's really an example of a major disruption to distribution, a model spearheaded by Fathom Events, the niche distributor which has specialized in two-night nationwide engagements..."
"...As Anderson explains, "That mass of niches has always existed, but as the cost of reaching it falls – consumers finding niche products and niche products finding consumers – it's suddenly becoming a cultural and economic force to be reckoned with."..."
"...Some choose to have their urn buried or kept in a niche in a mausoleum. Yaklin says that at the City of Austin cemeteries there are small burial spaces -- which also double as graves for children -- where cremation remains, or "cremains," can be interred..."
"...The message hasn't been missed by other grocery outlets: Sun Harvest Farms rejuvenated itself with a move to the former Whole Foods store in South Austin's Brodie Oaks and expanded its Anderson Lane store. Fiesta Market, a conventional supermarket with heavy emphasis on fresh foods, is keeping the status quo with its ethnic and blue-collar market niche..."
"...Which makes Guzu something of a missing link between the late, lamented Austin toy/movie/punk-rock art stores Jim "Prince" Hughes' Atomic City and John Lohse's Gomi (the latter still exists online here: www.gomikitti.blogspot.com) when it comes to niche art that's no longer as nichey but, strangely, ever more Nietzschean – Star Wars Stormtrooper Super Shogun looming over the cash register...."
"...Austin Chronicle: This is your second genre-based documentary in as many years. Had you planned on being the go-to guy for niche genre-film docs?..."
"..."A decade ago, bilingualism on TV was nonexistent. [Today, it] has clearly found a niche on TV," declared TV Guide critic Sally Bedell in her 1977 article on bilingual children's programming, "A Generation Without Cultural Hang-Ups." If a reading between the lines of Bedell's article is accurate, there's a mild exasperation in her tone when she continues: "sometimes as much as 10 minutes of Spanish appear in some Sesame Street episodes."..."
"...Finding a Niche and Scratching It..."
"...TV golf has always been a niche sport, appealing to a few wealthy pensioners in Scottsdale. Tiger changed this, but Tiger's a fluke..."
"...All three sets of Austinites create, cover, and market to a niche audience while carefully riding the line between not just art and commerce, but art, commerce, and faith. And while their scene may not be yours, it's hard to deny that it's interesting -- after all, there's three stories here, and not one of them uses the phrase "after their major-label deal imploded." At first glance, Grapetree Records' full-page ad in Billboard's Dec..."
"...Carole Chandler, one of KVRX's fundraising directors, sees the student station's potential for filling a niche in Austin's radio market left by the commercial station shake-up. "So-called alternative music has been so mainstreamed..."
"..."The main way to survive, apparently, as an independent is to be a niche store," says James Rost, assistant manager of Congress Avenue Booksellers. "This is a general bookstore, that's about the worst way to go when you're out there and have to compete with Barnes & Noble. That makes it super tough..."
"...But where that first film followed the real boy who was the inspiration for A.A. Milne's childhood classics, this is the Christopher Robin of the book (McGregor), all grown up in post-World War II Britain, with a wife (Agent Carter's Atwell, seemingly born to wear tweed) and daughter (Carmichael, hewing out her own midcentury niche after small parts in Darkest Hour and On Chesil Beach)..."