Category: media

“Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said on Saturday that he believed ‘the entire board as well as Mr. De Niro have learned a lot in the last several days.'”

“Though the idea might seem heretical to some, modern film-makers are doing what the Gospel writers did: showing and telling. By filling in the gaps, they are inventing their own non-canonical Gospels, in which they ask Jesus who he might be, and whether he thinks he is who some say he is.”

“[The radio network] has sent its political reporters to 90-minute hostile-environment awareness training, which in its typical form lasts a few days and prepares journalists for covering war zones or regions where terrorists are active.”

Yet “reality TV star” is constantly attached to Trump as a label and his rise in popularity as politician, with all its reverberations, is regularly blamed on the existence of reality TV. This is nonsense. Coarse, rabble-rousing politicians existed and thrived before television existed, let alone what we now call reality TV.

“There’s no way to quantify how much of broadcasting history has been lost, except to say that most of American radio will never be heard again. That is, many scholars argue, in large part the fault of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eliminated mandates for local ownership and led to major consolidations across the radio market. New ownership often meant the obliteration of recorded history.”

“Namewee’s film Banglasia, which centers on a group of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds who find themselves forced to accept each other’s differences, was banned from cinemas last year after 31 scenes were deemed inappropriate by local censors.”

“In the world of contemporary art, policymakers use our taxes to fund galleries and museums. In the world of theatre, we build new spaces and new stages. In the world of music, we fund broadcasters … So why in the film world do we predominantly fund films but not the spaces to screen them in? Why isn’t Australia’s film policy angled more towards distribution, access and experience?”

The problem with contemporary commercial cinema (epitomized by Hollywood) is that it’s more concerned with making money than it is with telling quality stories or creating indelible characters.

“There was Tito the lifeguard, who rarely if ever saw the need to wear a shirt. Lawrence Fishburne played Cowboy Curtis, Pee-Wee’s best friend, who confessed to sleeping in the nude and having ‘big feet.'” (Pee-Wee’s response: “You know what they say: Big feet — [pause] — big shoes!”) “And there was the time Pee-Wee married a fruit salad, about which very little needs to be said.”

“The tech disrupters would clearly gain. But the old-fashioned communal theater experience remains extremely powerful, both culturally — Would “Star Wars” be “Star Wars” without the midnight lines at the multiplex? — and as a business. And with that kind of money at stake, Hollywood is more than happy to continue looking stodgy.”