Category: media

Greta Gerwig won for direction and screenplay; Laurie Metcalf for supporting actress; and the movie itself won best movie from the 59 critics who vote in these awards. “Get Out” was quite close to winning both best screenplay and best picture as well. (See all the results in the article.)

Well, there’s the everyone wearing black to protest sexual assault in Hollywood part; there’s the no-Trump-jokes from host Seth Myers part; and then there are the awards themselves. “The annual Oscar race, which starts with festival screenings in late summer, has been unusually chaotic this time around. For various reasons — Hollywood’s attention has been elsewhere, the plethora of strong choices in some categories and few in others — consensus has yet to form. So the Globes could bring some clarity.”

There’s a long history of movie magic, thought it’s gotten easier in recent years with green screens. But “ever since Pretorius put ballerinas and kings behind glass in Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, filmmakers have used many different methods to make people appear small onscreen.”

Interesting, in the year of the Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement. “You could argue that in a year when powerful men were named and shamed, it is fitting that powerful women are to the fore. Maybe it is a coincidence, not least when you consider how long it takes for a film to be made. But bear in mind, the last time the top three films were fronted by women was back in 1958.”

Well, this is fun to know: “Traffic to the queen’s Wikipedia page peaked on Dec. 10, when the second season of ‘The Crown’ started streaming. The entry about Princess Margaret (played by Vanessa Kirby) spiked on the same day, and hit No. 37 on the list, just behind Melania Trump. (“I haven’t watched ‘The Crown,’ so I can’t really comment on the version of Princess Margaret that is drawing viewers to this site,” one Wiki editor wrote.) Prince Philip‘s page hits its peak in May when Buckingham Palace announced his retirement in real life, though he’s also played by Matt Smith in ‘The Crown’; he’s No. 44, between ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ and ‘Star Wars.'”

“I still don’t have a programmatic answer about that. I feel like everybody, critics or fans or whatever, figures out where to draw their own lines and how to deal with every case. … I think there is a rush to disown a lot these guys, to make them disappear, and I think that that is certainly warranted morally in a lot of ways, but I think it lets other people off the hook.” (podcast with transcript)

“The report, commissioned by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, surveyed 1,100 films made in the last 11 years, and found that just 4% were directed by women – which equates to 22 male directors hired for every woman. … Furthermore, just 5.2% of all directors – male and female – were black or African American, and 3.2% were Asian.”

“This year’s anguished discourse about art and artists underscores that criticism is rooted in lived experience. There’s no right or wrong way to review (well, there is, but that’s a discussion for another time). But I’m as impatient with critics who embrace self-serving auteurist fundamentalism or aesthetic formalism as I am with those belligerent fan boys who insist that only a comic-book obsessive can review a superhero movie. None of these camps want their pleasures challenged or their bubble worlds burst by reminders that a cherished director, say, denigrates women. I mean, by all means enjoy! But don’t expect me to shut up about it.”

“In response to the proliferating accusations in Hollywood, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has established a sex-crimes task force, and the police department has assigned five pairs of detectives, including experts in reviving cold cases. So far, twenty-seven investigations have been opened, including at least one involving minors.”

The findings are contained in a report by Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser, who estimates that news and sports together accounted for 23% of total national TV viewing, 13% of that being news.