Category: media

“They didn’t have a scope lens for the projector and it’s a scope movie and I let them show it anyway. … It gets to the final climax and all of the sudden the lights come up. They go back down, and then almost as if on purpose as far as suspense is concerned, right at the height of the movie … all the power goes out. So, [I thought] ‘OK, that’s what it’s like to watch your movie in public.'”

“Over the last decade, ESPN built perhaps the most profitable business in media, and the future of its business will likely exist somewhere beneath that superlative. But as long as Americans enjoy sports—and as long as individual sports leagues see a financial benefit in selling access to an entertainment company rather than selling straight to consumers—there is every reason to expect ESPN will continue to be an extremely valuable network.”

“You don’t need a printing press to be a journalist anymore. You don’t need a museum to be an artist. Web platforms have made it so anyone can distribute anything online. They’ve also shortened the distance between making something and remixing it; between distorting other people’s original work and just copying it outright. The same tools that enable artists to share their work widely makes it easier for those same artists to get ripped off by outsiders who sometimes profit from this kind of theft. But money isn’t the only thing separating collaboration from co-option.”

As the shows become ever more popular internationally, some women viewers see the female characters as empowered and inspiring – and those viewers become more willing to speak up for themselves. Others see the same shows as reinforcing traditional norms (women as caregivers dependent on men) and punish female characters who stray from those norms. And what do the men think? (Well, the photo at left is of a poster for one of these soap opera that’s been egged.)

If technology companies don’t come through with a long-term solution, it’s possible that humanity could lose a generation’s worth of filmmaking, or more. Here’s what that would mean. Literally tens of thousands of motion pictures, TV shows, and other works would just quietly cease to exist at some point in the foreseeable future. The cultural loss would be incalculable because these works have significance beyond their aesthetics and entertainment value. They are major markers of the creative life of our time.

“The Writers Guild of America early Tuesday morning reached a tentative deal with the major studios and networks for a new film and TV contract for the union’s nearly 13,000 members.”

However, a strike could still occur: “No deal has been announced so far and a strike could still happen if both sides fail to reach an agreement by midnight Monday, when the writers’ current contract expires. A strike would affect nearly 13,000 film and TV writers and would cause widespread disruption in Hollywood.”

As “The Fate of the Furious” takes in more than $1 billion, it’s time Hollywood stopped whitewashing and learned the lesson that to make money, they’ll have to diversify every cast (and not make Scarlett Johansson as a supposedly Japanese character either).