Category: media

“An investigation by MPR News” – which included interviews with more than 60 people who had dealt professionally with Keillor – “has learned of a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled.”

“The Shape of Water,” a low-budget fantasy about a mute janitor who falls in love with an imprisoned sea creature, became 2017’s most decorated film on Tuesday, receiving 13 nominations from Oscar voters, one fewer than the record for the most in Academy Awards history.

Very well, partly because of Amazon and Netflix. “This is no longer Mr. Weinstein’s freewheeling festival, the one he blasted into the public consciousness with eye-popping deals to bring male-gaze entries like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Reservoir Dogs to theaters. Sundance is now a prime showcase for women — films directed, produced and written by women; films with female protagonists; special events focused on female empowerment. And most of the distribution deals involve TV sets.”

The Producers Guild Awards loved Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, but the Screen Actors Guild (where women headlined, and wore pink instead of black in reference to the weekend’s many marches) went for Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.

It’s gone. Now Amazon Studios has complete blockbuster lust, and that could hurt Sundance … a lot.

It’s really time, with Dee Rees’ Mudbound and a string of longlisted Oscar documentaries. “Netflix’s rival Amazon has previously cracked the Oscar race by playing nice with an old-fashioned cinema-first release for prestige hopefuls such as Manchester by the Sea. How Mudbound performs this week may tell us just how swiftly the goldrush game is about to change.”

It’s not just a myth, but a real street. “Drive east to west, from where the street begins downtown to where it ends 22 twisting miles later at the Pacific Ocean, and at any point along the route, you will see the images that movies, TV shows and magazines have implanted in your brain.”

Where did Dee Rees, Ava DuVernay, Karyn Kusama and other directors get their big festival breaks? Sundance, of course.

“[The Pacifica Foundation] is at risk of asset seizure following a judgment in October that ordered the network to pay $1.8 million in back rent plus interest to the Empire State Realty Trust. The rent is for the transmitter of WBAI, Pacifica’s New York City station. … Pacifica’s total debt is roughly $8 million, including roughly $2.4 million to Democracy Now! Productions. The network is also in arrears for pension payments.”

Reporter Adrian Chen travels to Lagos to watch the development and debut of The Other News. a show which (so an American consultant working on it hoped), “by satirizing a kind of journalism that doesn’t really exist in Nigeria, … could actually help bring it about.”