Category: media

“None of this should have happened, but it did,” writes Andrew O’Hehir, Salon‘s executive editor and sometime film critic. “I suspect what befell Edelstein this week is only partly about one stupid Facebook post, and has more to do with the messy process of generational change and the inevitable Schadenfreude surrounding someone who holds two prestigious media jobs, either of which many other people would kill and eat their grandmothers to get.”

After its Academy Award wins, “Shakespeare” became Exhibit A when people claimed that a studio can buy an Oscar. Miramax certainly waged a hefty campaign for the movie, but it’s likely the “buy an award” theory was invented by rival studios who lost out that year and assumed it was a matter of spending rather than taste; their claims received widespread coverage on the then-expanding internet. But if the theory were true, why did “Shakespeare” win only seven of its 13 nominations? Why not a clean sweep?

Kyle Buchanan, the New York Times‘ new Carpetbagger: “This isn’t rah-rah boosterism: These awards can frustrate and often miss the mark, but that’s why they remain so crucial. If the Oscar nominations provide a snapshot of that year in Hollywood, and Hollywood helps shape the way we see ourselves, then examining them can tell us not only where the industry is headed but also where our cultural blind spots still lie.” Exhibits A, B, and C: #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, and #TimesUp.

Google will scale back its production of scripted content starting in 2020. While neither reported YouTube Premium — the $11.99-a-month subscription service — would close, it is unclear how many viewers would continue to pay, when the same content would be available for free, though with ads.

Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves announced that his church’s intellectual property case against Warner Bros. and Netflix for copying the organization’s iconic statue of goat-headed deity Baphomet for the set of the series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has been “amicably settled.”

There are broader cultural reasons for this renewed interest in the inner workings of the mind. This is an age of ego, self-examination and narcissism. “When we say narcissism, that’s really brought on by technology,” says Esmail. “Now everyone has a platform. Everyone can be a publisher. Whole lives are put up for people to react to, to like, to dislike, to comment on, and, yes, that has turned everyone to look inwards, and to curate a personality.”

The supposed “panic” was exaggerated by Orson Welles after the fact, and indeed it’s hard to know if people actually did panic at the time. But “in the anxious world of 1930s listening, a radio that knew your mind was a radio that could change it. The broadcast ended soon after. It had changed minds indeed.”

The original screenplay for this movie, centered around three women leads in early 18th-century England, was written two decades ago. But getting financing? Hm. “It was very difficult … because not only was it a story where there were three female leads, but there was also a gay angle. There was always interest, but it wasn’t an easy pitch.”

Jenkins says Hollywood “is also finally recognizing specifically that there is an audience for black literary adaptations: ‘It’s not only very clear there is an audience for this work, but to take it even further, there are people who are familiar with this work in its literary form — the same way people are familiar with work of non-black artists.'”