Chinese money has been buying up Hollywood movie companies with the intent of pursuing global business. So is this a problem? “When you control the movie experience, you can subtly influence public opinion. And the Chinese government has been transparent about that goal.”
Category: media
The True Freshness – And Possible Revolution – Of Issa Rae’s New HBO Series
“It’s taking a genre that’s long been pitched at one small sector of the viewing audience, and drawing the circle a little wider.”
Netflix Is Coming (Harder) For Movie Theatres, And Some Chains Are Furious
“Under the terms of this 10-picture deal [with iPic Entertainment], the luxury theater chain will screen original Netflix films in its 15 upscale theaters in cities including Los Angeles and New York.”
We’re Just Getting Started On Questions About Virtual Reality And Relationships
“If you’ve gone through great effort to be closer to someone, and you have plenty of space for other solitary pursuits, sometimes the most valuable things are the ones that anchor you to reality.”
Verbal Complexity Was Considered Elitist. So How Did TV Become The Place Where It Flourishes?
“We live in an epoch in which the battle for the complex and the resistant seems (“seems” is the operative word, as it often is) to have been lost. One of its early casualties was prose style. Style is not just a writer’s personal signature; and yet “classic style” is an oxymoron, because style is essentially idiosyncratic.”
The Death Of Movies Meme Is Just Silly
“Come December – once the likes of Moonlight, La La Land, Arrival,Manchester by the Sea, Elle, Loving and a dozen more all-time classics hit theatres – it will be impossible to argue that film is dead, and everyone who advanced such a click-friendly theory will feel pretty foolish. But it would surely help if studios decided that audiences didn’t have to wait until the end of the calendar to realize that the medium would live to see another year.”
How Amazon Is Remaking The Half-Hour TV Show
“At most studios and networks, [Joe] Lewis would be thought of as the head of comedy. At Amazon, he’s in charge of what the streamer more vaguely characterizes as half-hour programs – perhaps a more accurate descriptor, given how blurred the lines are between comedy and dramas these days. … Vulture recently spoke with Lewis for nearly an hour about how he approaches series development … and why the definition of an Amazon half-hour is likely to evolve over the next year.”
‘The Sidekick In His Own Movie’: Anger Over ‘Whitewashing’ In New Bruce Lee Biopic
“Audiences of Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon have criticised the film’s portrayal of the martial arts star, as well as the extent to which it relegates his story below that of a white co-star. … IMDb users who have seen the film protest that it actually focuses on a fictional white friend, Steve McKee, who learns kung fu and romances a Chinese woman.”
In 2016, Why Is Hollywood Still ‘Whiting Up’ Asian Characters And Stories?
“There are huge differences between whitewashing and the ‘white saviour’ trope, but both exist due to a sense in Hollywood that audiences won’t turn out to see a movie unless there are Caucasian faces involved somewhere. This is especially strange given research shows that people of colour, Hispanics in particular, make up a sizable portion of the US cinemagoing public.”
Can We Separate What We Know About The Celebrity From Their Work Onscreen?
“It’s only natural that we struggle to separate the performer or the artist from the art, because the way we consume entertainment is designed to conflate our concept of a person’s identity with the fictional one they project onscreen. We sometimes know too much about an actor, certainly our most elite A-listers, to fully forget who they are while we’re watching them work.”