Category: media

The Last Blockbuster Video Store In The Whole World (And It Still Does Good Business)

The next-to-last one, in suburban Perth, Australia, closes this month, leaving only the franchise in Bend, Oregon. “But this is no elegy for Blockbuster, no lament for how Netflix killed the video star. … This is about the ability of the Bend store, like sturdy links in other dying chains, to live on and avoid being turned into a pawnshop or a fast-food restaurant.” – The New York Times

Early Hollywood’s Morality Code Was Silly, Self-Righteous And Obsessive. But It Provoked Some Genius Work

It is usually believed that the anti-sex, anti-violence Code was harmful to art, intellectually unsophisticated, imposed from above and un-American in its disregard for First Amendment Rights. This is far from the full picture. Often the Code encouraged greatness, was intellectually nuanced, self-regulated and conformed to American values of Judeo-Christian ethics and free enterprise. For good and bad, it was as American as apple pie. – History Today

Quebec Radio Stations Pull Michael Jackson’s Music After Documentary

Jackson’s family and his estate have denounced the Leaving Neverland documentary in recent weeks through written statements, a lawsuit, and letters to HBO and Britain’s Channel 4, which also plans to air the film. Their central criticism has been the documentary’s failure to talk to family members or other defenders of Jackson, whom they insist never molested a child. – CBC

How Fox News Became The Propaganda Arm Of The Trump White House

Strange as it may seem today, there was a point at which the network was very skeptical of Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Now Fox News personalities appear with Trump at political events and give him policy advice, both on and off the air. Jane Mayer does a deep dive into how the change happened, who tried to keep it at bay (Roger Ailes!), and who chose not to stop it. – The New Yorker

Congressman Writes Jeff Bezos, And Five Anti-Vaxxer Docs Get Pulled From Amazon Prime Video

“The anti-vax documentaries had been available in the U.S. as part of Prime Video but as of Friday afternoon were not available to stream. … The move came just hours after U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) publicly announced that he’d sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressing concern that Amazon is ‘surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.'” – Variety

Behind Steven Spielberg’s Campaign To Exclude Netflix

The studio complaints about Netflix break down into a few simple categories. The first is that they spent way more money on Oscars marketing this year than anybody else—reported numbers range as high as $50 million, although even the more conservative $25 million would be five times what Universal spent for Green Book. And second, there’s the whole “they don’t run their films in theaters unless we make them” thing. – AV Club

Uh, Hold The Champagne For Disney And Fox (And Hulu)

This story is complicated, but basically, Fox executives, including two who are in line to be top executives at Disney, just got hit with a $179 million ruling that they committed fraud against the stars and executive producer of the massive hit Bones, which ran from 2005-2017. But it has larger implications. “What we have exposed in this case is going to profoundly change the way Hollywood does business,” the lawyer said. Will this news also break Hulu? – The Hollywood Reporter

Sure, Rami Malek’s Historic Oscar Win Is Great For Arab Representation In The Movie World

But a lot more needs to happen – and not just for filmmakers like Nadine Labaki, whose Capernaum (Lebanon) was up for Best Foreign Film, or Talal Derki, whose Of Fathers and Sons, filmed in Syria, was up for Best Documentary. “What is really needed is better support for Arabs working in cinema in the Middle East who are trying to make quality films.” – The New York Times

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s New Netflix Film Avoids Sensationalizing A Disaster Through Telling A Specific Tale

Ejiofor, known in the U.S. best for his starring role in 12 Years a Slave, has now directed (and is starring in) a new film for Netflix, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. He wanted to be careful to ground it, and set it, in a very specific place and time. “The way that we relate to those kind of rural African communities is very rarely within the epic storytelling tradition of cinema. … So it was important to me to look at that and to think, Okay, how do I render this truthfully, but in an epic way?” – The Atlantic