Category: media

Also, it’s paying $13 million – thirteen. million. dollars. – per episode of “The Crown.”

“Something rare happened this year: the best American film releases – Moonlight, La La Land, and Arrival – were also the most beautiful.”

Here’s what lies ahead after we all catch up with this year’s Oscar nominees and winners.

Dan O’Keefe explains how his father invented it as a family holiday 50 years ago, and how it got into a Seinfeld script. (O’Keefe really, really hoped it would get cut.) The real-life Festivus didn’t have a set date or season or the Feats of Strength, but there was an aluminum pole and there was most definitely Airing of Grievances.

“Gone is the lone genius with a shed full of goofy contraptions and bubbling liquids. Today’s fictional researchers work in realistic labs, with high-tech equipment, and in teams with others. Their dialogue is scattered with words from the latest scientific literature, and they have so much depth and personality that they carry entire shows.”

From “Empire” to “Blackish” and, in new shows, from Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar” to Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” TV approached the new civil rights movement with varying degrees of success.

“The Great Wall, an epic fantasy film that cost at least $150 million to make, opens with Matt Damon fleeing on horseback through red stone formations in Northwest China. A snarling swarm of razor-toothed green monsters is hot on his heels.”

“The saga started in 1987, when Eddie Murphy … thought the role of the son would be an opportunity to tackle serious material for a change, and Paramount Pictures bought the rights for him for more than $1 million, at that time one of the highest sums ever paid for a theatrical property.”

“It was a year when gender equity, racial visibility, and opportunity dominated the conversation in the entertainment industry and beyond. Provocative, representational, and entertaining content about women and for women was as crucial as ever. It was also a year when the best new programming and the strongest of the returning fare—Shonda, Lena, Tina, Rachel: We see you—was created by, starred, and concerned women, while demanding to be consumed by everyone.”

Michael Schulman wonders if the Academy voters don’t need their own rabbi or ethicist.