Category: media

Radio Giant iHeartMedia Files For Bankruptcy

iHeart, formerly known as Clear Channel, is the nation’s largest radio company, with more than 850 stations. It also owns iHeartRadio’s music streaming service, a large concert business, and a 90% stake in Clear Channel Outdoor, the billboard company. Clear Channel Outdoor did not file for bankruptcy. For years, the company has been saddled with $20 billion in debt, the legacy of a leveraged buyout in 2008.

The Best-Foreign-Language-Film Oscar Has Already Affected Politics In The Country That Won It

The award to A Fantastic Woman, about a transgender waitress dealing with the death of her partner, “has been enough to rekindle debate over a gender-identity bill that had been lagging in Chile’s Congress for nearly five years. What was once a proposal with partisan backing is now seeing support from both progressive and conservative legislators.”

Movie Criticism Is Better Than Ever, But Good Movies Still Fall Through The Cracks

“In the past decade, film criticism has become better than ever, by which I don’t mean that every critic writing is better than those of the past but that criticism is better over all—more critics than ever have actually seen many classic movies and a wide range of current ones, because cinephilia, an ardor for wide-ranging moviegoing, is now a core premise for even attempting criticism. (The gap between aesthetically advanced young critics and op-ed think-piecers is even more conspicuous than ever.) Above all, there’s a wider and stronger strain of curiosity, a deeper variety of interests that goes together with a younger set of critics who possess a wider variety of backgrounds and experiences, which makes it altogether less likely that a great movie will meet a solid tsunami of critical dismissal—and the sharing of views far and wide on social media, especially on Twitter, helps to get word around among critics as well as viewers.”

The Dying Oscars? Who Cares?

They need to allow their audience to narrow to those folks who actually care about movies, and stop trying to appease the viewers who only tune in when massive hits they’ve already bought and paid for are nominated. They also need not to worry about impressing the cinephiles and auteurs and other people who use French words to sound smart, because those people will always find something to scoff at and they won’t buy tickets to “The Post” anyway. Essentially, Oscar needs to just do Oscar and things will probably end up just fine.

Victim Of Success: HBO Faces Big Budget Crunch

HBO Programming President Casey Bloys warned of the growing cost of high-end drama. “As a show goes on they get more expensive and as shows get more ambitious they will get more expensive. More money doesn’t always equal better but in some cases the scope of ideas do require it,” he said. HBO is currently developing between three and five spin-offs of Game of Thrones and Orsi admitted that it was facing a budget “conundrum” if it goes forward with any of these.

New Film About Anders Behring Breivik Murders Has Norwegians Asking, ‘Too Soon?’

More than six years after the right-wing extremist set off a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and shot 69 more to death at a summer youth camp, “[Erik] Poppe, one of Norway’s best-known directors, has channeled his outrage into a film, U – July 22, the first cinematic depiction of the attack. The movie, which opened in Norway on Friday, has prompted a wider debate about the ethics of fictionalizing the traumatic event.”