Category: media

“According to plaintiff Craig Cargile, who filed on Thursday in Bibb County, Alabama, on behalf of [John B.] McLemore’s estate, [senior producer and host Brian] Reed, Serial Productions, This American Life, Chicago Public Media, and others allegedly used ‘McLemore’s indicia of identity in a commercial manner’ and seeks damages. Echoing concerns of some listeners, Cargile says McLemore never consented, nor would he have, to the podcast revealing or speculating on certain ‘mysteries’ of his private life.”

India’s broad defamation laws allow complainants to file civil or even criminal charges for insulting the feelings of religious groups or communities as well as individuals. Repeated suits along these lines have been brought against the producers of the hit Netflix India series Sacred Games. In one of the latest, concerning an epithet a character uses to describe the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, “the Delhi High Court on Monday said actors cannot be held liable for the lines they read from a show’s script.” (The court also asked the complainant to demonstrate why his lawsuit was in the public interest at all.)

“I think that the work needs to begin in the places with the largest disparity: disabled critics, queer-identified critics, critics of color, both women and men. I want us to not lose sight of the ball.”

“Entitled Burning Secret, the script is an adaptation of the 1913 novella by the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig. In Kubrick’s adaptation of the story of adultery and passion set in a spa resort, a suave and predatory man befriends a 10-year-old boy, using him to seduce the child’s married mother.”

The director always resisted giving any interpretation or explanation of the film’s final scene. But in a segment from an unaired Japanese television documentary shot in the late 1970s, Kubrick – reluctantly (“I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out”) – tells what he had in mind.

“In the long lead-up to its release, Chinese fantasy epic Asura was promoted as China’s most expensive film ever made, with a production budget of over $110 million (750 million yuan). So perhaps it’s unsurprising that the film’s producers, which include Jack Ma’s Alibaba Pictures, decided to take desperate action after the movie opened to just $7.1 million over the weekend.”

The issue has lost more than 98% of its value this year and has continued to decline in recent weeks in the wake of AMC’s launch on June 20 of a discount pricing program, allowing customers to see three movies a week for a $19.95 monthly fee. MoviePass has more than 3 million subscribers and allows customers the chance to see a movie a day for a monthly fee of $9.99. But Wall Street has been losing faith in whether MoviePass can survive by selling data about its customers and striking marketing partnerships.

The company reported 670,000 streaming net adds domestically and 4.47 million internationally. Wall Street analysts expected 1.23 million net adds in the U.S. and 5.11 million overseas for the period (slightly higher that Netflix’s prior guidance).

The survey noted that parents allow their children to play these PEGI 18 titles “without supervision or knowledge of the game beforehand.”  The survey, found by GamaSutra, also revealed that 86% of respondents don’t pay attention to the ratings assigned to games. Many parents surveyed feel differently about film ratings, as only 23% responded that they don’t concern themselves over film age restrictions.

Yeah, it spent billions. But “Netflix racked up its dominant tally by having lots of Emmy-approved shows in many categories, rather than one or two overperforming titles — perhaps the best possible outcome for an outlet whose business model is geared toward appealing to as wide an audience as possible. While HBO, NBC, and Hulu all had shows with more than 20 nominations, Netflix’s biggest performer — The Crown — earned a comparatively modest 13 noms.”