Category: media

“As there are no movie theatres in Gaza, the screenings are held at a rented hall at the Red Crescent Society building.”

“No one sees the director but everyone sees the actors, so the notion of directorial authorship flies in the face of common sense as well as of the theatrical tradition on which movies appear to be based. Yet the very notion of authorship (whether with movies or books or elsewhere) isn’t a theory, a policy, or a wish—it’s either the viewer’s experience or it’s nothing at all.”

Yes, it’s been that long: the iPod was launched back in 2001. But – except for a few popular radio shows like This American Life – the first generation of podcasts weren’t always professional quality, and most faded away. But over the past couple of years, the form – led by Serial – had leapt upward in quality, variety, and popularity.

“EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online game – a single environment shared by thousands of players, like World of Warcraft or Second Life – that has been in continual operation since 2003. … And in the latter half of the 2000s, those people engaged in an enormous conflict: The Great EVE War.”

“The digital technology that was supposed to rescue the back catalogue from oblivion, restoring and preserving fragile celluloid for future generations, poses as many problems as it solves. The digital age is full of false assumptions about access and availability, and film is a fleeting medium, its materiality under more direct assault than ever before.”

Inside the data, the researchers found something: “significant evidence that movies featuring black actors not only keep up with films at the box office and among the critics, but blow away films with no black actors at all.”

“More than a century ago, before women had even won the right to vote in many countries, actresses headed up some of the U.S’s most popular and successful action movies – even if they performed stunts in skirts that ended only a few inches above their ankles.”

“In fact, by shaming their characters, these shows are trafficking in a very old, very deep aesthetic pleasure. Aristotle called it ‘catharsis’.” Only in this case, the emotions involved aren’t pity and terror.

“The result is a gig economy in which temporary labor pays to be “taught” by independent contractors, who in many cases are staffing programming for media corporations. Cost-conscious networks and studios offload a burden once held by productions to cast their shows onto the labor market itself. Millions of dollars previously spent on casting have been cut from balance sheets, and tens of thousands of aspiring actors have been stuck with the bill.”

“Retouched, impossibly enhanced bodies are creating unrealistic new body-image standards — and the effects are so sophisticated and invisible that most audiences aren’t aware of how much they’ve been manipulated.”