It seems to be a more relevant question now than ever, partly due to the changing landscape of filmgoing, partly because of everybody’s ability to be a critic if they so choose. The reviewer is no longer always first to the film, and there have been a number of notable discrepancies between critical consensus and public opinion, from La La Land to Three Billboards, the latter of which prompted Ashley Clark to tweet: “The majority of the consensus-building bloc in film criticism is white and male, and it’s not massively surprising that some of what makes this film objectionable to many didn’t resonate.”
Category: media
AMC Theatres Chain Launches Rival To MoviePass
“As the largest theater chain in the US, AMC positioned itself early as MoviePass’ harshest critic, deriding its cut-rate model as catastrophically unsustainable. But on Wednesday, AMC announced that it would offer a subscription plan of its own: AMC Stubs A-List.”
Disney Overbids Comcast With $71.3B Offer For 21st Century Fox
“Disney has boosted its offer for 21st Century Fox … to $71.3bn – from $52.4bn – trumping Comcast’s $65bn all-cash hostile offer tabled last week. Disney has also moved from its original tactic of an all-stock deal for Fox, … and a 39% stake in Sky, to a 50/50 mix of cash and shares.”
New EU Copyright Plan Could Block Popular Memes
Those filters could mark the death knell—at least in Europe—for social media use of popular memes like “Distracted Boyfriend” or the entire universe of SpongeBob memes. That’s because the filters created to prevent users from posting copyrighted content would be expected to catch the same copyrighted images from photographs or movies that are the basis for many popular memes.
The Scary Algorithm-Driven Nightmares Of YouTube Children’s Videos
“Beyond the simple knock-offs and the provocations exists an entire class of nonsensical, algorithm-generated content; millions and millions of videos that serve merely to attract views and produce income, cobbled together from nursery rhymes, toy reviews, and cultural misunderstandings. Some seem to be the product of random title generators, others – so many others – involve real humans, including young children, distributed across the globe, acting out endlessly the insane demands of YouTube’s recommendation algorithms, even if it makes no sense, even if you have to debase yourself utterly to do it.”
World Health Organization Classifies Video Game Addiction As A Disorder
The 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) will include the condition “gaming disorder”. The draft document describes it as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes “precedence over other life interests”. Some countries had already identified it as a major public health issue.
Proposed EU Copyright Law Alarms Free Speech Advocates
By requiring Internet platforms to perform automatic filtering all of the content that their users upload, Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users. The damage that this may do to the free and open Internet as we know it is hard to predict, but in our opinions could be substantial.
A New New Wave Of Queer Cinema
“This year’s strong queer showing [at Cannes] was indicative of a larger watershed moment for LGBT cinema across the industry, as stories and artists once confined to rarefied corners of the arthouse are being gradually welcomed into the mainstream. … The last couple of years, however, have kicked that evolution into fast-forward, helped along by real-world advances in LGBT rights, and the Twitter-assisted revolution in identity politics awareness. The world, in other words, is a very different place for gay and trans people than it was even a decade ago, and cinema is feeling the change.”
You’ve Heard Of K-Pop, Now Meet K-Drama: South Korea Exports Its Version Of Telenovelas
“‘The industry’s tripled in size since the early 2000s,'” says [producer] Ma Jung-hoon. … ‘Half of our income comes from international sales.” Says an American executive who distributes K-drama, “I think that the format of Korean dramas is very digestible. So instead of having these long, 20-episode, multi-series shows like we have in the US and other parts of the world, Korean dramas are [up to] 16 episodes. That’s it, you only have one season.”
Check Out These Jokes From ‘The Simpsons’ That Never Made It On Air
In an excerpt from his book Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for ‘The Simpsons’, writer/producer/showrunner Mike Reiss shares a few of the bits that were just too weird even for this show (or that didn’t make the cut just by happenstance).