Category: media

It’s not only the Netflix reboots of One Day at a Time* and Full(er) House: after years of single-camera mockumentaries like The Office and Parks and Recreation, networks are turning back to multi-camera sitcoms – often driven by contemporary issues, Norman Lear-style. Elise Czajkowski looks at how the change is happening.
*Any excuse to watch Rita Moreno is a good one.

“There were things South Park had always had trouble imagining: it was complex and dialectical on male anger and sadness, and able to gaze with empathy into the soul of a troll, but it couldn’t create a funny girl or a mother who wasn’t a nag. What it did get, however, was how dangerous it could be for voters to feel shamed and censored – and how quickly a liberating joke could corkscrew into a weapon.” A longread by Emily Nussbaum.

“Public cinemas in the country have been illegal since the 1980s, but a plan to reintroduce them has been mooted by the head of the General Authority for Entertainment.” Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah al-Sheikh, head of the Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas and the Kingdom’s top religious authority, loudly begs to differ.

“Since speculation emerged last fall that Disney might be interested in getting its paws on Netflix, Wall Street has been split on whether such a tie-up would be a bold, smart move or an unnecessarily risky gambit.”

“‘Watch Now’ started out small with around 1,000 titles – about 1% of Netflix’s 70,000-video physical library – when it began rolling out on Jan. 16, 2007. Videos ranged from Hollywood classics like Casablanca, to cult movies, to foreign films, to mini-series – including the original 1990 BBC series of House of Cards.

As broadcasters the world over are gradually dropping traditional FM signals for digital audio, Ernie Smith tells the story of FMX, a 1980s technology that researchers and engineers were convinced would give a huge improvement in sound quality and be relatively smooth to adopt. Radio stations were gradually getting interested, until …

Movies that show struggles against prejudice, poverty, ignorance, oppression and fear reflect liberal values only in the sense that “reality has a well-known liberal bias”, said Marty Kaplan, quoting Stephen Colbert. “If there were big money to be made telling stories celebrating home schooling, semi-automatic rifle ownership, the bullying of gays, white supremacism, misogyny or xenophobia, Hollywood would be racing to make them.”

Blame “Glee” – and probably “Hamilton,” too.

TV makers have choices. Should they “continue to create content that might arouse the anger and derision of Trump supporters and the right-wing media that helped get Trump elected? Or do they somehow seem to support Trump by celebrating figures like him and reflecting the views of pro-Trump viewers? Or does [TV] veer toward escapism that cannot be interpreted as having any political context or meaning?”

One of Fences’ powerhouse stars says, “They’re opening up because, I think, they’re being forced to open up.”