Category: media

“How much is at stake in France’s upcoming elections has become evident again in recent weeks as controversy has erupted over the new arthouse film This Is Our Land (Chez nous). … The debate stems from a supporting character named Agnès Dorgelle (Cathérine Jacob), a blonde leader of a far-right party associated with nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, much like the real-life politician and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen.”

In the past, we thought of addiction as mostly related to chemical substances: heroin, cocaine, nicotine. Today, we have this phenomenon of behavioral addictions where, one tech industry leader told me, people are spending nearly three hours a day tethered to their cellphones. Where teenage boys sometimes spend weeks alone in their rooms playing video games. Where Snapchat will boast that its youthful users open their app more than 18 times a day.

“Why did Disney decide that modernizing [the beloved animated film] was a risk worth taking? … Some people see a cynical money grab, a way to keep those theme park turnstiles clicking and little girls begging their parents for princess gowns. But the answer is actually a lot more complex.” Brooks Barnes investigates.

When filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of the stars of the Iranian New Wave, finished The Nights of Zayandeh-rood in 1990, the country’s censors cut about a third of it (some of that at the direct request of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei) and then locked it away after a screening at a Tehran festival. Makhmalbaf, now living in London, somehow (he won’t say) got the footage out of the archive and into release in Britain.

While the bits with Alec Baldwin (as Trump) and Melissa McCarthy (as press secretary Sean Spicer) tend to be solid, argues David Sims, “the rest of SNL‘s political satire, such as Saturday’s cold open that framed Attorney General Jeff Sessions as Forrest Gump, often leans on presenting the Trump administration as cheerfully unaware or low on brainpower. It’s a more toothless approach that’s far easier for viewers of all political viewpoints to dismiss.”

As Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie noted in disgust the morning after Trump’s speech to Congress, “This morning is a good reminder that so much of what passes for political analysis is just theater criticism.” Alyssa Rosenberg responds: “On behalf of critics everywhere, I take a minor amount of umbrage: After all, we generally set higher standards for performances than ‘basic competence,’ and we tend to address style as well as substance. But … maybe political commentators could stand to take a few tips from those of us who practice criticism for a living.” Rosenberg offers three good ones.

On TV, disability is played for laughs, for horror (such as with the “evil cripple” trope), or ignored even by shows otherwise committed to diversity. While critics have coined the phrase “crip up” to refer to the many able-bodied actors who have played disabled characters, often to widespread acclaim, a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that 95 percent of all disabled characters are played by abled actors (full disclosure, I have worked for the Ruderman Family Foundation on other projects).