Category: media

Chicago Sun-Times Suspends Film Critic Richard Roeper

“Roeper was one several prominent journalists, sports stars, politicians and celebrities who had paid to increase their Twitter followers with fake accounts, according to a New York Times report published over the weekend. Roeper’s Twitter following currently numbers over 225,000, but it was not specified by the Times report how many of those followers were fake.”

Why You Should Still Collect DVDs

“I’m not against digital media, and I think it’s certainly a fine way to have access to your films without taking them with you. But when you become solely reliant on digital sources, you have fewer options than you think, and you’re certainly not getting the best version of the movie available. All of this is troubling because streaming is dominating the landscape.”

Hollywood Should Move On From Naming And Shaming Abusers To Restorative Justice

In her Golden Globes acceptance speech, Laura Dern said, “I urge all of us to not only support survivors and bystanders who are brave enough to tell their truth, but to promote restorative justice.” While many listeners might have found Dern’s call to be a mere bromide, Ann Hornaday explains that the term “has a very specific meaning, that happens to hold particular promise for an industry in the midst of intense self-examination, and equally intense avoidance thereof.”

Radio France Chairman Fired For Corruption, Though Ugly Gossip About Him And Macron Is Swirling

“Mathieu Gallet, 41, was this week fired as chairman of Radio France by the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA), the French broadcasting authority. Officially, he was dismissed after being convicted of corruption and fined €20,000 for giving a €400,000 contract to a consultancy owned by one of his friends.” But rumors – pushed by former president Sarkozy’s culture minister – claim that President Macron had Gallet fired to quash rumors that the two had had an affair.

The Curious Case Of The Movie Whose Studio Lost Confidence In It

Annihilation will still hit screens in the world’s two biggest markets—the U.S. and China—but the Netflix partnership is an unusually public show of nervousness over the film’s profitability. Paramount can use the money from the deal to help recoup the film’s reported $55 million budget, but if Annihilation is a hit, the studio will miss out on any international grosses. The deal also effectively signals Paramount’s lack of trust in the vision of the filmmaker it hired.

So What Was Manhattan’s Lincoln Plaza Cinema *Really* Like? This. (And Maybe This Is Why It’s Closing)

“Irritated cross talk and loud quarrels, whether between couples or random filmgoers, was such a mainstay of the Lincoln Plaza experience that last fall, my wife and I made a point of going there to see The Meyerowitz Stories, with Dustin Hoffman playing an ill-tempered sculptor and bad father, because we knew it would be like seeing the film in Sensurround.” And, found Bruce Handy, it was – even at a weekday matinee.

How Live Music Shaped Silent Movies

The soundtrack for any given showing depended, in large part, on the setting. At deluxe movie palaces, films were often accompanied by entire symphony orchestras. “A medium-sized neighborhood theater might carry between five and ten musicians,” writes Scott Eyman in The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926–1930. “Even the meanest fleapit in the sticks had a piano player.”