Time Warner had kept HBO on a tight leash, allowing an estimated $1.5 billion annual budget for original content in 2018—play money when compared with Netflix’s reported $10 to $11 billion. That forced HBO to pass on the very shows and show-runners that put the streamers in the cultural conversation and in direct contention with HBO as the rulers of cinema-quality television. – Vanity Fair
Category: media
How The Sundance Festival Is Evolving
In stepping back, Robert Redford is acknowledging the welcome ways in which the festival continues to evolve: Some 40 percent of this year’s movies were directed by women, and 36 percent were made by people of color. Meanwhile, 63 percent of the accredited press come from “underrepresented groups.” – The Atlantic
DeepFakes Explained – How Seeing-Is-Believing Is Going Away
CNN offers some great demonstrations of how fake videos in which people can now say and do things they never did will challenge one of the bedrock truths of our time – that you can believe what you see. – CNN
Your TV Is Now A Computer – And You’ve Lost Control Of It
Analysts estimate that smart TVs now make up about 70 percent of all new TV sales. The television is no longer a mere display, but a full-fledged computer, for good and for ill. And what is a computer now? On the one hand, it’s something companies sell to consumers for money. But after you’ve purchased an internet-connected device of any kind, it begins to generate information that the company can use itself or sell to third parties. – The Atlantic
New Streaming Service For Arthouse Films To Launch This Spring
With FilmStruck having closed and Criterion’s planned service limited to the titles admitted to its Collection, serious cinephiles who stream were feeling a bit bereft. “Enter OVID, a recently announced partnership [whose members]… control the rights to thousands of different documentary, arthouse, independent, and international titles.” — Hyperallergic
Museo Del Barrio Cancels Show On Director Alejandro Jodorowsky Over His Boast That He Raped An Actress
The statement in question comes from the director’s 1972 book about his breakout 1970 film El Topo: “After she had hit me long enough and hard enough to tire her, I said, ‘Now it’s my turn. Roll the cameras.’ And … I really raped her. And she screamed … Then she told me that she had been raped before. You see, for me the character is frigid until El Topo rapes her. And she has an orgasm.'” — ARTnews
Despite Attempts To Improve, YouTube’s Recommendation Engine Is Still A Rabbit Hole
That YouTube can be a petri dish of divisive, conspiratorial, and sometimes hateful content is well-documented. Yet the recommendation systems that surface and promote videos to the platform’s users, the majority of whom report clicking on recommended videos, are frustratingly opaque. – Buzzfeed
A Rising Chorus Urges Journalists To Get Off Social Media. Jeff Jarvis Dissents
“When journalists delete, dismiss, or disengage from Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or Reddit or blogs, they turn their backs on the people who finally — like the journalists — have a printing press to call their own. For too long — since Habermas’ alleged birth of the public sphere in the coffee houses and salons of London and Paris — that sphere has excluded too many people, whom social media finally can include. Listen to them.” – Medium
Why Do Americans Love The Great British Bake Off So Very Much?
With binge-watching on Netflix, themed baking groups, self-GBBO challenges, and more, the U.S. seriously adores the Great British Bake Off. But why? Hm: “Many US viewers have said that they decompress watching the show, and they like that it is the antithesis of the nation’s fraught politics.” – BBC
At The SAG Awards, Mrs. Maisel And Black Panther Come Out Ahead
And so does Glenn Close. What does this mean for the Oscars? Hm. (Full list of nominees and winners at the link.) – Los Angeles Times