Category: media

“When we start to step back to see this larger ecology, I think we see a picture of exclusion. … And it doesn’t match the norms of the population of the United States.”

“Documentaries will be the best record of this time in our country’s history. Documentaries aren’t as hopeful as movies. They’re not as pretty either, but they’ll give it to us straight. They’ll give us the cash-poor, or the crazy, or horrifyingly illegal practices of the filthy rich, or racially-infused violence. They’ll deliver subjects that filmmakers have otherwise been avoiding.”

“Increasingly films such as ‘Sivas’ and other foreign-language movies, including those nominated for this year’s Academy Awards, are chipping at the edges of American dominance. Talented directors and advances in digital filmmaking are helping countries rarely associated with movie production to gain acclaim for turning out intriguing counter-narratives to familiar themes.”

“Those feelings of displacement and despair crop up repeatedly at the Berlinale, as if in response to our current geopolitical moment – one defined by news stories about forced migrations and refugee crises.”

“See any stories of late about expensive swag that attendees to the upcoming Academy Awards are getting? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences certainly has – and it’s not pleased. The social media hashtag that has prompted a lawsuit this award season is not #OscarsSoWhite. Rather, it’s #OscarGiftBag.”

Stirred into almost immediate action by all the hullabaloo, the Oscar folks upended their old established order. “The academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up,” Boone Isaacs memorably said. But once the academy revealed its strong new rules, it both quieted the uproar and created a backlash of its own.

“Broad City does more than simply portray – more even than simply celebrate – its central friendship. It is instead taking a cue from a culture in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler joke (and also totally don’t joke) about their status as ‘life partners.’ … What that amounts to is a culture that is not only recognizing the primacy of friendship, but trying to carve a space for it.”

Arwa Haider goes back to the beginning – Rudolph Valentino’s Sheik and vamp Theda Bara (whose name is an anagram of ‘Arab death’) – through Back to the Future and Indiana Jones to today’s (inconsistent) improvements, especially from Arab-descended Westerners.

“Filmmakers and authors have long held the right to make fair use of copyrighted material, transforming it for uses like criticism and commentary, making arguments, and providing historical context. But the DMCA made it illegal—and, in some cases, a crime—to access this content by breaking encryption.”

At Oculus, a leading virtual reality company, a copy of the popular sci-fi novel “Ready Player One” is handed out to new hires. Magic Leap, a secretive augmented reality start-up, has hired science fiction and fantasy writers. The name of Microsoft’s HoloLens headset is a salute to the holodeck, a simulation room from “Star Trek.”