New features and series from the streaming giants deal frankly with such subjects as corruption, government dysfunction, the drug trade, religious and communal violence, and female sexuality. Says the director of one such series about why online studios can treat topics Bollywood can’t, “It’s a given that movie-watching in India is a family experience, a community experience. Families didn’t sit together to see Sacred Games.” – The Guardian
Category: media
How The Toronto International Film Festival Needs To Evolve In The Streaming Era
The same challenges apply: What are the films that can work theatrically, that can compel people to come? How can we make that collective experience really rewarding and transformative so that people will still want to come here? I think that’s an ongoing challenge for everyone. – Toronto Star
Blame Video Games For Violence? First, The Evidence Doesn’t Support It…
Games have shifted from a broad cultural enemy—a gory medium that all types of people might hold responsible for social disgrace—to a political tool. Video-game violence was once a bipartisan worry. Now it’s a largely Republican talking point, deployed for tactical political gain to great effect. – The Atlantic
The Hot Commodity For Celebrities: Scandal Insurance
Dick pic? Groping? Racist rant? It’ll be fine. There are now “plans to sell ‘disgrace insurance’ to entertainment companies and commercial brands, making the risk of celebrity downfall as quantifiable and reimbursable as that of floods and car crashes.” – Vulture
Television Critics Love, And Award, ‘Fleabag’
Everyone loved the first season of Fleabag just fine, but then the second season went and added a hot priest to the mixture. The TCA Awards responded. (The entire list of other winners – yes, there were some – is at the link as well.) – Vulture
The Farewell May Be Culturally Specific, But The Issue Of Lying To Dying Relatives Is Cross-Cultural
A man who gained work in the movie business as an undocumented immigrant says that “it’s the element of migration and the severed intergenerational connections it creates that modify the family dynamics in Billi’s story, my story and those of millions of others whose relatives are scattered far from their common source.” – Los Angeles Times
Tarantino And Women
He doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to the women in his movies. And then there’s his exchange with a reporter at Cannes this year. “His curtness in dismissing the concerns of a woman journalist (dredging up memories of his painfully testy exchange with critic Jan Wahl in 2003) made the exchange explode across the internet. And it reignited a conversation that’s dogged the director for years and that has, post-#MeToo, risen in volume: As a filmmaker, is Tarantino bad to — or for — women?” – BuzzFeed
Listen To Cate Blanchett, And Don’t Let Your Creativity Lapse After Having Kids
Well, not Cate, actually, but her character in Where’d You Go, Bernadette? That character hasn’t been able to create anything for years. The movie’s director, Richard Linklater: “Creativity thwarted is probably the most toxic thing in the world. You know, the artist thwarted is lethal.” – NPR
What Do The Original ‘Lion King’ Animators Think Of The New, Heavily CGI Version?
One animator said, “I will only get myself in trouble if I comment on the ‘other’ version,” so there’s that point of view. Another: “I think some of my colleagues forget that when you work on a Disney movie, you don’t own it. They own it. You get paid to work there, which is a great privilege. It’s an amazing company. You get to work on this great stuff. But when you walk away, it’s their movie and they can do what they want with it.” – HuffPost
Producers Pushed Producer Lulu Wang To Make ‘The Farewell’ In English With Some White Leads
But she said no, every time, and the film seems to have turned out OK. “It broke the box office record set by Avengers: Endgame for per-screen average, taking in $351,330 in four theaters when it opened in limited release.” – Variety