At the start of his series, Clark asked: “What is civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it.” Turning to Notre Dame, he added: “And I’m looking at it now.” Schama, shaken by Isis brutality, is certain: “We can spend a lot of time debating what civilisation is or isn’t,” he says, “but when its opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilisation is, we know it from the shock of its imminent loss, as a mutilation on the body of humanity.”
Category: media
Twenty Years Of Rotten Tomatoes And How It’s Changed Hollywood
Can Rotten Tomatoes really make or break a movie? It definitely has an impact, says Ethan Titelman, a senior vice-president at the Hollywood market research firm National Research Group (NRG). According to NRG’s annual survey, 50% of regular moviegoers frequently check the site, often immediately before buying their cinema tickets. And 82% are “more interested” in seeing a movie if it has a high Tomatometer score, while two-thirds are deterred by a low score.
How The Crop Of New Academy Voters Is Changing The Oscars’ Dynamics
“What kind of effect are these new voters having on the films and artists that are ultimately chosen to contend for an Oscar? … Of the 14 new members we talked to, who span several of the Academy’s branches, more than half were women, and more than a third were people of color. All of them spoke anonymously and with great candor.”
Is Africa’s Film Industry Finally Starting To Get Some Traction?
Many cinemas in Africa also have a hard time simply staying open: expensive film rights, high rent and pirated copies of movies have caused a movie-slump on the continent. And the theatres which are in operation mostly show Hollywood productions. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), all cinemas were sold in the 1970s during the rule of former president Mobutu Sese Seko. Political unrest and armed conflict made it difficult for filmmakers to work freely and creatively over the next few decades. The situation only eased after 2010 and in 2014, the first international film festival took place in Kinshasa. Cinemas are now popping up again around the country.
Roxane Gay: I Can Write The ‘Batgirl’ Movie; DC Comics: Okay, Let’s Do It
“After Joss Whedon stepped down as the film’s writer and director on Thursday, Gay tweeted saying, ‘Hey [DC Comics] I can write your Batgirl movie, no prob.’ The tweet quickly garnered attention, leading Michele Wells, a Warner Bros. vice president who also works on DC films, to respond to Gay’s message. ‘If you’re serious … contact me,’ Wells wrote, providing her email address.”
Comcast, Elbowing Murdoch And Fox Aside, Makes $31 Billion Bid For European Satellite TV Giant Sky
“U.S. cable giant and NBCUniversal owner Comcast has made an unsolicited $31 billion (£22 billion) takeover bid for European pay TV giant Sky, offering more than Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. NBCUniversal’s parent company unveiled its all-cash offer of £12.50 per share ($17.48) to Sky’s shareholders early Tuesday London time. That marks a 16 percent premium to Fox’s existing bid of £10.75 per share.”
Why Movie Audiences Don’t Turn Out For Smart Science Fiction
“Sci-fi is a fun genre to work in; it tests creativity, but it seems like it also tests audiences’ patience. They don’t turn up for it. You really have to make a world that audiences are willing to step into and that’s proven the most difficult thing.”
The Internet’s Post-Text Future
The shift to a thoroughly video-driven internet is indeed on its way, and it will be terrible. To the extent that it attempts to cash in on original content, it will necessarily be terrible, in the conventional sense, because there is not enough talent to go around—ever wonder why British television (and film) relies on the same five actors and actresses? On the other hand, American art has a long history of inspirational terribleness, of sublime trashiness and no-budget artistry that far surpasses, in quality, critically sanctioned prestige. I have no confidence that Google or Facebook will recognize such non-talent for what it is or could be.
A ‘Clumsy, Silly’ Golden Bear Winner Highlights The Collapse (In One Critic’s Opinion) Of The Berlin Film Festival
Peter Bradshaw is not taking any prisoners, comparing the win of Touch Me Not to Brexit and the current U.S. president. “This is a quasi-fictional documentary essay about sexuality, which deluged me in a tidal wave of depression at how embarrassingly awful it was, at its mediocrity, its humourless self-regard, its fatuous and shallow approach to its ostensible theme of intimacy, and the clumsy way all this was sneakily elided with Euro-hardcore cliches about BDSM, alternative sexualities, fetishism and exhibitionism.”
Director Ava DuVernay Talks About Changing The Voice, And The Lens, Of Hollywood
Don’t get her wrong; she’s not unhappy with her success, or the success of Ryan Coogler of Black Panther or Dee Rees of Mudbound, but she knows the tiny number of directors of color in Hollywood. “We kind of sit on the top of a broken system. … Until that system is fertile ground for real growth, then we will just kind of sit on top of it as sparkly, shiny things for people to feel good.”