Category: media

These days, Amazon can practically anticipate when you might need toilet paper and Netflix can predict your next binge, so it only seems natural that Hollywood will start using AI to predict the next big blockbuster, or at least improve its chances of becoming one. In fact, several companies are already working on algorithmic ways to predict box office results.

Jeune Femme took Cannes by storm last year, and its writer/director still says her star “was at once totally the character, and not the character at all. When I write a script, I can be a bit precious, so I need someone who’ll come in and blow the whole thing apart.”

However: “The 2018 juries feature two female heads this year (Cate Blanchett and Ursula Meier), and the festival has announced efforts to gain parity in its administrative staff.”

In the porn industry, “Amateurs are flooding the internet; piracy has addled the once-dominant studios; production has atomized and scattered. But along the way, something interesting has started to happen: Women are rising up.”

“Every so often, … Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, fire off a number of thoughtful memos to the movie industry and the industry-adjacent. These messages are largely ignored, which does not stop Ms. Dargis and Mr. Scott from continuing this semi-serious tradition. Given the new summer season and how deeply fraught the past year has been – Harvey Weinstein, Netflix, #MeToo, #oscarsalittlelesswhitebutnotmuch – it was time for our critics to weigh in again with their thoughts (and complaints).”

It was know as the Laff Box, and it was mocked up – jerry-rigged, almost – by mechancial engineer Charlie Douglass. You’ve heard it on everything from The Munsters and Gilligan’s Island to Cheers and MAS*H, and “[it] could chuckle. It could guffaw. It could laugh with sighed relief. It even had a reel, controlled by the foot pedal, that was only titters, one person lightly laughing at a time. At its most sophisticated, the box had 320 laughs” – and Douglass deployed them with surprising cleverness and subtlety.

“Like Bollywood, Polish cinema has flourished” – with some titles even making the weekly top 10 at the box office – “in UK multiplexes rather than arthouses, without any help from the British media. It is only partly true to say that the mainstream press has ignored these releases; what’s more significant is that its attention and approval were never sought in the first place. With Polish now the second most commonly spoken language in England, English-speaking viewers are not part of this particular success story.”

The channels occupy a precarious space between YouTube’s algorithm and its copyright policing, drawing comparisons to the unlicensed pirate radio stations of the 20th century, recreated in the digital sphere. Many of the channels blink in and out of existence within a week, but their presence has become a compelling part of the site’s musical ecosystem. And while competitors like Spotify are gaining, YouTube still dominates the streaming world, according to the latest Music Consumer Insight Report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.