“Allen’s stature as an important filmmaker (unlike his personal reputation) has proved surprisingly sturdy – despite the withering self-assessments he offers every so often. In an interview during the filming of Match Point, he described himself as ‘functioning within the parameters of my mediocrity,’ and went on to note that if he were ever to make another great film, it would be ‘by accident.’ False modesty? Some, no doubt. But we would do best to take his words at face value.” And yet, writes Christopher Orr, “Allen’s reputation depends in no small part on the very indolence that undermines so many of his films.”
Category: media
Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes: Hollywood Blames Review Website For Its Rotten Summer
Rotten Tomatoes has become the enemy for many studio bosses, writes Brooks Barnes: “Over lunch last month, the chief executive of a major movie company looked me in the eye and declared flatly that his mission was to destroy the review-aggregation site.” The site’s editors claim they love movies and movie fans and just want to help them. “How did a clunky website that has been around for 19 years amass such power?” Barnes explains how.
Movie About Democracy Movement Massacre Rocks South Korea
“Ten million people in South Korea, one-fifth of the population, have watched Jang Hoon’s movie A Taxi Driver (Taeksi Woonjunsa) since it was released on 2 August. … The film is set in May 1980, during the mass democratic uprising – and ensuing military crackdown – in the southwestern city of Gwangju.”
Ken Burns’ Big Tent Theory Of History
“To the satisfaction of many viewers, and the dismay of some historians, Burns seemed to have shaped American history into the form of a modern popular memoir: a tale of wounding and healing, shame and redemption.”
We’ve Had The ‘Fake News’ Debate Before – In The Early Days Of Radio
Adrian Chen looks back at Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, the wildly exaggerated newspaper reports of public panic over it, and the anxieties behind the entire uproar, noting the parallels with today’s concerns over false reports spread via the internet.
Summer Movie Box Office Was Terrible. But Hollywood’s Not Too Worried
Even so, studios are unlikely to shift gears anytime soon. Overseas audiences continue to devour what Hollywood serves up. And many studio executives dismiss the recent slump in North America, which remains the world’s No. 1 movie market, as a normal part of a cyclical film business. Box office behemoths, they insist, are just around the corner.
Summer 2017: Movie Box Office Disaster. TV? It’s Doing Just Fine
“By the time Labor Day weekend wraps, summer box-office revenue is expected to finish at $3.78-billion [U.S.], down 15.7 per cent over summer 2016, according to comScore. That’s the steepest decline in modern times, eclipsing the 14.6 per cent dip in 2014. It will also be the first time since 2006 that revenue didn’t clear $4-billion.” Further, to no one’s surprise, the value of stock in companies that own theatre chains in the United States has collapsed – Regal Entertainment has seen shares plunge 28 per cent, while AMC Entertainment dropped 45 per cent. Meanwhile, television, even broadcast TV, is doing fine. It’s not a matter of across-the-board revival for the networks.
‘Whitewashing’ In Hollywood Casting Is Becoming Bad For Business
“The industry excuse for whitewashing is often that bankable star names are needed to make a project commercially viable. Yet few of these examples [that have come in for criticism in the past few years] have been hits.”
An All-Girl Remake Of ‘Lord Of The Flies’ (The Twitterverse Is Pretty Skeptical)
As Roxane Gay tweeted, “An all women remake of Lord of the Flies makes no sense because … the plot of that book wouldn’t happen with all women.” (What’s more, the movie will be written and directed by two guys.) Other people, pointing to Mean Girls and Heathers, argue that the idea isn’t so farfetched.
BBC To Experiment With ‘Slow Radio’
Remember “slow TV“? The Norwegians pioneered it, with programs like a real-time seven-hour train run from Bergen to Oslo. Well, BBC Radio 3 (the classical music station) is going to try the audio equivalent.