Category: media

Originally, Coldplay (a band) refused to let Warner Bros. license the song “Yellow” – partly because of the connotations of the word. “Chu’s letter to the band, though, changed its mind within 24 hours, and a Mandarin cover of the song, performed by Chinese-American singer Katherine Ho, closes out the film at a pivotal moment.”

And there was more of it before Netflix abruptly canceled Michelle Wolf’s and Joel McHale’s late-night format programs. What if viewers simply don’t exist for this kind of show anymore? Even “Conan O’Brien, TV’s longest-serving late-night personality, is poised to take his hour-long Conan on TBS to 30 minutes next year.”

Does anyone in charge in Hollywood even know what “a Southern accent” is? “I’ve had people ask, ‘Can you teach me a Southern accent?’ I’m like, ‘O.K. What state? What part of the state? What culture?'”

If Amazon does buy Landmark, will it just show its own content? Probably not – Amazon Studios are moving away from arthouse, award-winning content for more popular fare. One (terrifying to movie fans) option: “Esports and other forms of live-gaming, Ark and VR location-based experiences — communal entertainment in the 21st century is evolving past just sitting in a darkened theater quietly watching the same two-hour film as the strangers next to you. A company such as Amazon could take these spaces and outfit them for that purpose.”

Riley says that despite his deep love and appreciation for Lee, the new movie BlackkKlansman is not what African Americans need right now. Riley: “This is being pushed as a true story, and it is precisely its untrue elements that make a cop a hero against racism. … For Spike to come out with a movie where a story points are fabricated in order to make Black cop and his counterparts look like allies in the fight against racism is really disappointing, to put it very mildly.”

“If you want to see a community turn against an artwork that depicts them, make it the only one. If that artwork is by a woman, about women, and openly feminist, half the job’s already done. … [The Joy Luck Club‘s] greatest achievement — becoming the most prominent example of Asian-American representation on screen for a quarter century — is also what has relegated it to being a relic and, for many Asians, an embarrassment.” Well, argues Inkoo Kang, it’s time to get over all that.

In the upcoming adaptation by Armando Ianucci (Veep, The Death of Stalin), Dev Patel takes the title role, with black, Asian, and white actors spread throughout. Says producer Kevin Loader, “I think we felt this was how you’d get the best cast more than anything else. And suddenly you can have Benedict Wong coming in to play Mr. Wickfield, and he’s hilarious. He wouldn’t have been cast in the BBC version of David Copperfield.”

An analysis of 50 of the top-grossing films of 2016 finds females make up only one-third of all characters. But that’s a significant improvement over the last such survey, which looked at films released in 2002. And, perhaps more importantly, it reports females are now far more likely to be depicted in positions of power.