Jen Salke’s appointment “comes at a critical juncture for the Seattle-based retailing giant. It must craft a cohesive programming strategy, mend relations with some Hollywood producers and develop more mainstream hits to better compete against deep-pocketed streaming rivals, including Netflix, HBO and Hulu.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Top Stores From AJBlogs For The Weekend Of 02.11.18
Three Women Meet and Make a World
Dana Reitz premieres Latitude at New York Live Arts Dana Reitz in her Latitude. Photo: Kate Enman “Exquisite.” That was what a colleague whispered to me as he emerged from New York Live Arts’ theater … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2018-02-11
Weekend Listening (And Viewing) Tip: Brent Jensen
Bassist Bren Plummer’s live radio broadcast a couple of days ago (scroll down two items) prompted me to check out the KNKX-FM website. There, I found a post about another Pacific Northwest … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-02-11
Wesla Whitfield, RIP
Wesla Whitfield, a singer of uncommon talent, taste, musicianship and courage, died yesterday in St. Helena, California. Her husband and accompanist of more than three decades, the pianist Mike Greensill, announced her … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-02-10
Berkshire Debacle: The Attorney General Caves
Read it and weep. The Massachusetts Attorney General has acceded to a plan for the Berkshire Museum to sell as many of its 40 deaccessioned worksas necessary to come up with the $55 million … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-02-09
Southern Literature and the Drive-By Truckers
CELEBRATED Yale historian C. Vann Woodward used to talk about the irony of Southern history, and the burden of Southern history, both phrases drawn in part from the novels of Faulkner. Patterson Hood, a … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2018-02-09
London’s King’s Cross Got A Three Billion Pound Upgrade, And For What?
Says Olly Wainwright: “For sure, it is more dry digestive than gelatinous trifle, but that is generally to be welcomed. It is also refreshing to find a development where as much, if not more, attention has been paid to the streets and spaces as the buildings that frame them. It may be the usual kind of overly managed pseudo-public space, but accusations of privatisation are unfounded, given that most of the site was off-limits to the public before.”
Does Disneyland Have A Superfan ‘Gang’ Problem?
Or are the so-called gangs – groups of families and friends, with vests and patches, who go to Disneyland together – just harmless fun, as they claim? “A lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court has revealed a dark undercurrent to the pastime. The head of one club has accused another of using gangster-like tactics to try to collect ‘protection’ money for a charity fundraiser at the park.”
Women Explain What It’s Like To Work As A Director In Not-Actually-Progressive Hollywood
The stats are deeply ugly: “In 2016, only 7 percent of the directors behind 250 of the year’s highest-grossing domestic releases were women. (In television, things are a bit better: Thirty-two percent of first-time episodic directors during the 2016-17 television season were women.) From there, women directors get lower budgets on average, and their projects are played on only one-third as many movie screens as male-directed films, according to a study cited in 2016 in The Hollywood Reporter.”
The Township That Ended Library Fines – And What That Might Mean
Why would the politicians who make those decisions think this was a good one? “The council said in a statement that fines can be ‘off-putting for customers,’ and it hopes the change, which will see library fines eliminated across Trafford for all ages from April, will lead to ‘a further increase in usage of libraries across the borough.'”
Yes, MoviePass Is Growing Fast, But If It Doesn’t Grow Faster, It May Be Headed For A Fall
Will this happen? “To get well beyond the 2 million [subscribers] it already has, MoviePass needs to convince people that they really want to go to movies more often. In most cities, a subscriber needs to watch 13 movies a year to break even. In big cities, it’s eight.”
In The Original Content Fight, Here Comes A Huge Contender: Facebook
A new 10-episode dramedy series is just the newest in a lineup of original content with which Facebook is trying to bust in on the Amazon Prime/Netflix/Hulu/HBO Now game (and it’s even got on of the Avengers in it).
A Broadway Bigwig Gets A Web Series, And Takes On The President
Jordan Roth, whose Jujamcyn Theatres owns five of Broadway’s 41 theatres, and “who has had a longtime interest in performing and has dabbled in video production previously, conceived of this new series months ago, with the idea of developing ‘a kids’ show for adults,’ modeled on ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ and ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse.'” And there’s a lot of swearing – not to mention jokes aimed squarely at the president.
Listen Up, Literary Snobs: You Need To Wake Up To The Fact That Romance Is Lit
Romance isn’t pretending not to be about politics. “Romance is political because all art is political, but also specifically because of what it is and who makes it. As the genre grapples with its place in the resistance, it confronts the structures of privilege and exclusion that have shaped the genre for decades. It is a reflection of America, after all, in more ways than one.”