Category: media

A project called Net Art Anthology, curated by Rhizome, an affiliate of the New Museum, was an attempt to tentatively create a historical understanding of net art. Unveiled online over the course of two years, the effort involved the archiving and restoration of 100 digital artworks— often a laborious process because browsers that could display the pieces no longer existed, or other aspects of the technology had to be preserved or emulated. – The New York Times

Critic Wesley Morris nods to The Blind Side, Crash, and The Help, but he concentrates, of course, on current contender Green Book and its Oscar-winning predecessor Driving Miss Daisy, as well as non-Oscar-contender The Upside. He points out that those films’ central (interracial) relationships are all based on employment — “pay-to-playmate transactions,” he calls them — and contrasts them to the more realistic employer-employee relations in a film that should have been an Oscar contender, Do the Right Thing. — The New York Times

As it happens, there’s a Hindu ritual called paalabhishekam in which worshipers pour milk over the statue of a deity. Overenthusiastic fans in the state of Tamil Nadu have started applying the practice to their favorite films’ posters, hoping that will help the movies become hits. Only they’re not buying the milk; they’re stealing it — and driving the state’s dairy farmers and dealers broke in the process. — BBC

“Viewers who spend more time consuming commonly binge-watched online original programming are more likely to see others in the world as mean, and less likely to perceive them as altruistic,” write Boston University researchers Sarah Krongard and Mina Tsay-Vogel.

“It’s certainly positive that Google is investing more in Wikipedia, one of the most popular and generally trustworthy online resources in the world. But the decision isn’t altruistic: Supporting Wikipedia is also a shrewd business decision that will likely benefit Google for years to come.”  – Wired

Kevin Fallon: “The real dissonance, as this year’s Oscar nominees make clear, is between Oscar voters and critics. It’s not whether voters care if their movies have been seen by the general public that is the big question anymore. It’s whether they care if their movies are good.” – The Daily Beast

The nominations reflect a completely polarized votership many of whose various constituencies can’t stand one another! The resemblance to real life is uncanny. – New York Magazine

Describing her as “a terrific director of actors whose comedy can lacerate,” New York Times co-chief film critic Manohla Dargis reviews May’s career, from her 1971 directing debut, A New Leaf, through The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey and Nicky, to the notorious Ishtar (1987), an expensive quasi-flop generally considered to have ended May’s directing career but which Dargis calls “a loony, loopy blissout … whose time is now.” — The New York Times

Both films received ten nods each, including Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress. The Roma nominations are making a bit of history: it’s the first Netflix original title to get a Best Picture nod, Yalitza Aparicio is the first indigenous performer, and one of the relatively few non-English-speaking ones, to be nominated for Best Actress. — Los Angeles Times