Category: media

Take the First Amendment, and then flip it. That’s Saudi Arabia’s media landscape – and Netflix, the huge media company, is supporting the regime’s censorship. – The New York Times

Whoa. (Here’s the full list, including some rather surprising winners.) – Variety

Here’s a collection of stories and a future live-blog for the ceremony, which starts at 8 Eastern tonight. – Los Angeles Times

A century ago, Lois Weber ruled Hollywood, directing 138 films and being counted as one of the three finest minds in the industry, alongside DeMille and Griffith. Her biographer: “She was a very vocal advocate for cinema’s ability to portray complex social issues in a popular narrative form. … She considered cinema what she called ‘a voiceless language.’ And by that I think she meant cinema had an ability to convey ideas to anybody, regardless of their educational level, regardless of their command of English, right, at a period when there were many immigrants to the U.S. who did not speak English as a first language.” – NPR

Why is anyone, much less seemingly everyone, watching Netflix’s deeply mediocre (if even that) Bird Box? Some critics try to explain. For one thing: “It’s like a taunt: The negative reviews pour in, so the streaming site ― which otherwise doesn’t publicize viewership data ― deflects with a not-so-humble brag that can’t be fact-checked. How convenient.” – HuffPost

The talk-show host, who is “the most influential openly gay person alive, gave Hart a massive platform and let the homophobic tweets that led to him stepping down from the gig go unquestioned.” But hey, we’re all buddies here, right? Er. “At the exact moment when popular culture is finally reckoning with its bigoted history, the country’s most famous daytime host, whose own career was almost destroyed by homophobia, is prioritizing an agenda that does not serve the viewers who look to her for wisdom.”  – HuffPost

What was a joke in 2001 is a reality in 2019: You can buy a Harry Potter egg cup and toast branding set or a Hedwig lip balm (really? Owl lip balm?). That’s because “everything changed last March, when Warner Bros announced a new brand: WIZARDING WORLD™.” In other words, the books and movies might be a decade old, but marketing is evergreen. – The Guardian (UK)

Television was a revolution in the way people accessed information and entertainment. We forget now, but artists were intrigued not just by by the medium’s possibilities but also by its limitations. And they experimented with what it could and couldn’t do. – LitHub