Blog

The Studio Behind This Year’s Oscar-Winning Animated Short Are Trying To School Hollywood

Lion Forge is a Black-owned animation studio, the only Black-owned animation studio. For founders and staff, that makes its mission different. “It’s representation on the screen. It’s representation on the producing side of things. But then also, and I think what’s always missed, is, there needs to be representation in the executive teams that have the power to be able to push the content through.” – FastCompany

Reshooting A Zombie Movie During A Pandemic Isn’t Actually That Easy

Comedian Tig Notaro is replacing disgraced actor Chris D’Elia in Army of the Dead, but how exactly does that play out during quarantine? It doesn’t. “The film will mix full reshoots of Notaro acting opposite a partner and solo shoots of her using a green screen and CGI to incorporate her into the existing film. Production will commence as soon as it’s safe to do so.” – Los Angeles Times

A Lockdown Q&A With Yo-Yo Ma

How he feels playing to an online audience: “You can’t touch, you can’t hug, you can’t shake hands. But what music does, its sound moves air molecules. So when air floats across your skin and touches the hairs of your skin, that’s touch. That’s the closest thing to someone actually touching you. It’s as if you were miniaturized and you’re in the middle of a lake. But that lake is a bowl, and that vessel is holding you. That’s what music can do.” – Washington Post

Career Moves In 2020: Storming TikTok, Freaking Out The President, Hosting Late-Night, Getting A Netflix Special

Sarah Cooper is a UX engineer who, during lockdown, decided to take advantage of TikTok and the United States president’s, er, unique response to the pandemic, earning her a huge response and putting her career as a comedian into a unique space. “The world now has more avenues for #content than ever before. Traditional television shows and films have been massively sidelined by Covid-19 lockdowns—and while we all miss shows like Euphoria and the usual summer blockbusters, a lot of other forms of entertainment, like Cooper’s videos on social media, have emerged to fill the void.” – Wired

The School Of American Ballet Finally Hires A Permanent Faculty Member Who Is Black

When Aesha Ash got hired as a City Ballet dancer, she felt the weight of her people on her back. “I wasn’t just dancing for myself, and I wasn’t just dancing to rise through the ranks and be seen by a director to promote me,. … It was so much bigger than that. I was trying to battle stereotypes and biases on that stage every single night. And I succeeded in some and I failed in others.” Now she’s teaching, but she’s still trying to clear a path for other Black dancers. – The New York Times

The Robert E. Lee Statue At The U.S. Capitol May Move To A Virginia Museum

Sure, one might wonder why one of the United States’s greatest traitors has a statue in the United States Capitol Building, but that’s a long (racist) story. In any case, it’s time for the statue to leave. “The recommendation to move the Confederate general’s monument to the [Virginia Museum of History and Culture] was made unanimously by the Commission for Historical Statues in the United States Capitol during a meeting on August 7.” – Hyperallergic

What In The Heck Is AMC Thinking With The 15 Cent Movies?

Basically, AMC is creating a breeding ground for viral spreading (and not the good kind of viral): “Look, no one wants to get back in a movie theater more than I do — well, OK, my 13-year-old may want it a bit more — but I don’t think a marketing stunt that appears to be an attempt to lure people into theaters with financial incentives is the best decision ever made.” – Los Angeles Times