Category: media

“Nymphetmania has a long and hoary pedigree in Hollywood, and flourished years before Nabokov gave us the Lolita syndrome” – from DW Griffith’s child-woman ingénues such as Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh through Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby right up to late Woody Allen. “It is no longer possible to rationalise as consensual certain egregious pairings, or to accept with equanimity the sexualisation of underage performers. We have begun to take a second look at the smarmy overtones of movies such as Allen’s Manhattan and Louis CK’s now-shelved I Love You, Daddy, in which ‘protective’ older men ogle daughter figures in utterly self-serving ways.”

“The Times will produce a daily 30-minute radio version of the podcast for distribution to stations starting in April. Though the podcast is released at 6 a.m. Eastern time, public radio stations will be able to air the radio version between 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern time.”

In what seems to be the first, and surely won’t be the last, incidence of life imitating this particular piece of art, “members of the Justice 4 Grenfell group paraded billboards emblazoned with the words ’71 dead’, ‘And still no arrests?’, ‘How Come?’ around central London locations in an attempt to keep victims of last June’s tower block blaze ‘in the national conscience’.”

In the era of auteur-driven film and television, YouTube has always been a space for auteurs—or as they’re known online, creators—to maintain complete autonomy over their content. The transition from online platforms to traditional media may seem like a natural next step, but oftentimes taking that leap comes with immense risk. For online creators, the biggest part of that risk is loss of creative control.

“Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined filmmaker Ava DuVernay and producer Dan Lin on Monday to launch the Evolve Entertainment Fund, a public-private partnership aimed at creating new opportunities for communities that have been historically excluded from the entertainment industry. The fund plans to raise $5 million by 2020 to award grants to various entertainment industry organizations.”

“Omarosa Manigault Newman, a three-time contestant on NBC’s The Apprentice, volunteered to enter a surreal house in which minor celebrities, acting out under constant media surveillance, conspire to eject their rivals one by one.
Then she went on Celebrity Big Brother. That it took the second experience (a CBS reality show) to get Ms. Newman to open up about the first (her tenure in Donald J. Trump’s White House) may not be the model of civic discourse that the founders envisioned. But it’s the one Americans voted for, and maybe the one we deserve.” (includes video)

It was a perfect genre for the early days of television, and was quite successful, as you can see on YouTube in old episodes of What’s My Line and To Tell the Truth. “[It] was a purely American invention, yet somehow it’s become deeply associated with modern British TV. Here’s why.”

Trump’s budget proposes eliminating federal funding for the CPB over a two-year period. The budget has to be approved by Congress before it can take effect. In a statement released Monday, PBS president Patricia Harrison said that the “elimination of funding to CPB would at first devastate, and then ultimately destroy public media’s ability to provide early childhood content, life-saving emergency alerts, and public affairs programs.”

One mom who won’t take her son said, “I’m pretty sure Beatrix Potter will be turning in her grave about now. … Allergies are often not taken seriously enough anyway. To have them trivialized on the big screen by such a popular character is immensely disappointing.”