Category: media

“That’s where some of this comes from, when you hear people saying that a light-skinned woman can’t play a dark-skinned woman when they’re both clearly of African descent. To say that if I’m gonna cast a movie, I’ve gotta hold a brown paper bag up to the actresses and say, ‘Oh sorry, you can’t play her.’ Who’s to decide when you’re black enough?”

“It’s equally difficult to ignore the fact that, while it is hard for all women in Hollywood, it is particularly hard for black women, and even harder for black women who share the dark skin, broad nose and full lips of Nina Simone.”

Perhaps predictably, only two of the top ten come from before 1990 (and one of those was 1985); the top two were released in the last five years. Yet the oldest movie on the list goes all the way back to Weimar-era Germany.

The Italian Conference of Bishops’ Film Evaluation Commission ruled that the film is “not advised, unusable and scabrous (indecent or salacious)” – and since the Church owns most of Italy’s art-house theaters, that was a problem. Yet the movie – which is no. 2 on the list of greatest LGBT films, by the way – was the country’s top earner per screen last weekend, taking 50% more than the runner-up.

“But in the last few years, a new kind of sitcom has emerged on cable and streaming networks, complete with its own tropes. We now have ‘the cell-phone emergency’, ‘the mid-afternoon brunch’, the ‘dating-app disaster’, the ‘wander-the-city walk-and-talk’. Classic network sitcoms traded in the ‘will they, won’t they’ sitcom staple; shows like Broad City and Girls have embraced the ‘are they or aren’t they’ [tension].”

“Twenty-five members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who are of Asian descent – among them two-time best director Oscar winner Ang Lee and former members of the board of governors Arthur Dong, Don Hall and Freida Lee Mock – have sent a letter to the organization protesting ‘tasteless and offensive skits’ about Asians that were featured on the 88th Academy Awards on Feb. 28.”

“Now, a startup backed by Sean Parker of Facebook and Napster fame … called the Screening Room … offers secure anti-piracy technology that will offer new releases in the home on the same day they hit theaters.” But it will cost a lot more than the price of two cinema tickets.

“After hosting four purr-fectly successful Internet Cat Video Festivals, the Walker [Art Center] is quitting cats … ‘We think that cat videos will live on without us, and we’re really excited for other people to take up the mantle and program their own festivals’.”

“It will take more than a good name to compensate for the frustrations of trying to celebrate talent in an often undervalued industry in a country without a real star system. Those frustrations were on full display Sunday during the CBC telecast of the awards, a two-hour show that featured as many head-scratching moments as it did high points.”