Category: media

Winners? Big internet providers and marketers. Losers? “You. If you’re a normal person and you want access to the Internet, get ready for all kinds of airline industry-style charges. You’ll either accept a slower connection or pay extra for going over a threshold on your unlimited data plan. In practice, you’re likely to get amazing speed and service for video content you don’t care about and terrible service while trying to use the things you really want. The solution … pay more.”

It seems almost impossible to predict. Yet “one narrative threatens to overwhelm all others — the Movie That Speaks to Our Present Crisis.” (All eyes are on Get Out.)

Yes, yes, a movie about the Day of the Dead rescued the box office from the 2017 graveyard, etc. etc. (This is, of course, what Disney/Pixar movies are supposed to do.)

The horror is the one reflected in the one painting in the book and adaptation – Guido Reni’s Susannah and the Elders. The horror runs through the heart of everything. “Everyone is possessed by the same demon that no one can exorcise. It’s a horror so pervasive and unimaginable that a glimpse of its true power drives Doctor Jordan mad.”

Director Dee Rees, who did Pariah in 2011 and HBO’s Bessie in 2015, had a much larger budget – and has much more marketing backing – for this movie, but she also says, “A bigger budget can buy you more background … but it’s not going to buy you better performances. For me, the directing work is still in the performances. It’s still in the blocking, the composition. Money doesn’t buy you better frames, you know what I mean?”

Industry analysts and experts in the animation community said Lasseter’s absence could be a significant blow to the studio if his departure becomes permanent because the executive has been such a key figure in its success. Lasseter is the chief creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

“Apple won’t catch up to either by 2022 in terms of spend, projecting that Amazon will eclipse Netflix, $8.3 billion to $6.8 billion. Earlier this year, Apple signaled its intent to invest as much as $1 billion into original programming. That’s still well short of Netflix, which announced previously an $8 billion budget toward original and licensed content in 2018, and Amazon, which is expected to spend more than the $4.5 billion that went into premium video entertainment this year.”

“This was a story that didn’t need to be told entirely through a male gaze. I’ve been accused of telling things through a male gaze, and I didn’t want to give people any more ammunition. Plus, why wouldn’t I want Lynn Nottage to write scripts? She’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, for Ruined and Sweat. Why wouldn’t I want Eisa Davis, Radha Blank, even my sister Joie wrote a script?”

Not only are these prizes for indie movies with budgets under $20 million honors in their own right, but for the last four years, the winner of the Best Feature prize went on to win the Best Picture Oscar the following night.