After Netflix received 24 Oscar nominations on Monday — the most of any studio and the highest level to date for the streaming giant — both chains said that they wouldn’t screen its movies. They’re protesting the streamer’s distribution policies. – Los Angeles Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Netflix Isn’t Disrupting Diversity (Or Oscar)
Seriously, is this the brave new world of streaming? Where press releases go out daily about the wildly “diverse” television creators drafted by Netflix (and to a lesser extent Amazon) but the Oscar-nominated Netflix films come from Martin Scorsese and Noah Baumbach? – The Los Angeles Times
Dance Protests In France Over When Dancers Can Collect Their Pensions
On Saturday, officials announced that the government would withdraw, at least temporarily, a plan that would have raised the full-benefit retirement age, now 62 for many workers, to 64 for all professions. The Paris Opera Ballet’s dancers currently stop working at 42, then receive monthly payments equal to 45 to 48 percent of their top salaries. – The New York Times
The Future Of Entertainment: 10-Minute Shows On Your Phone?
Yup. A startup called Quibi has raised $1 billion in investment capital from every major Hollywood studio and most of the major tech companies. It has corralled an A-list tsunami to make programs—Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Anna Kendrick, Zac Efron, Chrissy Teigen, Jennifer Lopez, Antoine Fuqua, Sam Raimi, Catherine Hardwicke, Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Lena Waithe, NBC News, ESPN, BBC. The whole thing launches in April with a year of advertisements already sold. – Wired
The Most Popular (And Powerful) Word In The English Language
‘The’ tops the league tables of most frequently used words in English, accounting for 5% of every 100 words used. “‘The’ really is miles above everything else,” says Jonathan Culpeper, professor of linguistics at Lancaster University. But why is this? – BBC
Is This The Earliest Drawing Of Venice?
Friar Niccolò da Poggibonsi took notes on gesso tablets while he traveled, and when he returned to Venice in 1350, wrote down his full firsthand account. The oldest manuscript of the work and its illustrations, titled Libro d’Oltramare, now resides in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. – Smithsonian
Reconsidering Cole Porter
Though he was born into genuine if provincial affluence, with second-tier European royalty filling out the family’s dance card on vacation, he chose to become a working stiff. Reversing the usual American ascent from labor to leisure makes for a more strenuous, and more moving, story. The labor produced a new kind of American lyric, and language. – The New Yorker
Extreme Film Criticism (Can You Hang?)
Some film critics now differentiate themselves from amateurs through the practice of Extreme Film Criticism. In it, critics subject themselves to physical, film-related challenges that bear little resemblance to long-form criticism of decades past but would nonetheless intimidate most amateurs. Then they write about it. Landing somewhere between product placement and a fraternity hazing ritual, these pieces constitute a response to major shifts in the landscape of both the news media and the film industry, with serious implications for the life expectancy of criticism as a form, and perhaps for the individual critics themselves. – Los Angeles Review of Books
Time’s Up Creates Database Of Diverse Critics
The new database hosts profiles of underrepresented critics and journalists and invites media outlets, studios, networks, talent and film and television critics associations to find and contact them for screenings, interview junkets and publishing opportunities. – Los Angeles Times
Americans Spent $25 Billion On Home Entertainment Last Year
The key point: Home entertainment has evolved into a true multiplatform business. Universal found that consumers are using around three platforms on average, the most common bundle being disc purchase, disc rental and subscription streaming. – Variety