“Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. … But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.”
Category: media
AMC Movie Theatres Reports A Great Spring/Summer Quarter At Box Office
Revenues from admissions jumped 17.7% to $896.3M during a period that saw the release of such blockbusters as Avengers: Infinity War, Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Food and beverage sales increased 19.2% to $445.8M. Of the total revenue pie, $313.2M came from international theaters as compared to $294.9M for the three months ended June 30, 2017.
USC Report Says Hollywood Has Not Improved Diversity Over Past Ten Years
The group’s ever-expanding annual report – today’s release, “Inequality in 1,100 Popular Films,” covers the top 100 movies each year from 2007 through 2017 – shows no significant statistical improvement in the representation of women, people of color, LBGT characters or characters with disability over the past decade.
Why MoviePass Was Utterly Doomed
Felix Salmon: “The easy answer is: It was selling dollars for a dime, and you can’t do that for very long until you go bust. … The company burned cash until it didn’t have any cash left to burn and fizzled out. But in the spirit of Chesterton’s fence, it’s worth looking at the thesis behind MoviePass, and to try to make a distinction between the calculated risks that just didn’t pan out, on the one hand, and the crazy ideas that were never going to work, on the other.”
Unseen Sketches For ‘Monty Python And The Holy Grail’ Surface
“Boxes of material deposited at the British Library and seen by The Times contain dozens of unused script ideas, including two sketches written for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (The early scripts had far more material than could fit in a feature film.) “One is about a Wild West bookshop and another features an amorous Pink Knight.” (includes transcripts of sketches)
Why Would A Sane Woman Go On A TV Dating Competition? As Performance Art (Of One Kind Or Another)
Ann Hirsch is a video artist who created a YouTube persona that attracted many thousands of viewers and got picked up by 4chan. Cathy Nardone just wanted to be on TV; she had done one reality series and was itchin’ for more. As part of Slate‘s “Decoder Ring” podcast series, Willa Paskin looks at what happened when the two women assumed fake personas to get on VH!’s Frank the Entertainer in a Basement Affair. (audio)
Disney, Fox Shareholders Approve $71.3 Billion Acquisition Deal
“Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders on Friday voted in favor of a $71.3 billion deal, in which Disney will acquire large parts of Fox, including the 20th Century Fox film and TV studios, Fox’s entertainment cable networks and its international assets.”
Twitter Is Making Us All Comedians
As a child, when I heard jokes and watched sitcoms, I considered comedy to be a wonderful, ineffable mystery — like sex, or the Trinity. But the joke formats and memes of social media are training wheels, template-izing comedy for beginners. It’s impossible to look through the microscope at the comedy petri dish all day and not start to pick up on its rhythms and mechanics. For better or for worse, we’re all becoming comedy writers now, in a writer’s room the size of a planet.
There Are Three Movies About The Demise Of Gawker In The Works – What Do Ex-Gawker Staffers Think Of Them?
“It’s unclear how many of the projects, if any, will end up panning out, but drafts of the first two have been going around the film and media worlds for a few months now. … But what do the people who lived through the whole ordeal think? We decided to ask the Gawker diaspora, a cadre of writers who were never shy about sharing their opinions, what they thought about the idea of a movie about the demise of their beloved site.”
What ‘M*A*S*H’ – The Book, The Film, The TV Series – Taught Us Then And Teaches Us Now
“Rationality has lost its currency. The people in charge are dolts — masters of manipulation making testosterone-fueled, incendiary moves on the world stage. Patriotism has soured into ugly, gun-loving nationalism, with brown people and foreigners the targets of a nonsensical, hateful rage. … Each morning seems to bring some fresh hell, a reminder that the nightmare is real, and that there is no end in sight. Salvation is found in small, personal connections, in wry humor, and in the forlorn hope that intelligence and decency will ultimately prevail. That’s one way to describe the basic plot of MAS*H.”