“It can be a difficult enough sell to get moviegoers to take in homegrown English cinema, let alone films with subtitles. Yet at the same time, Quebec is inarguably producing the best films this country has to offer.”
Category: media
Why Do We Watch/Read/Listen To Some Things Over And Over Again?
The most obvious reason is something called the “mere-exposure effect.” Quite simply, people prefer things they’ve previously been exposed to. The effect makes sense from an evolutionary point of view: If we’ve been through a door 100 times and know what’s behind it, we no longer have to worry that a predator is waiting beyond the threshold. But how does this relate to re-consumption of media?
China Is Moving Into Hollywood In A Big Way
“China’s film industry is healthy and prolific in its own right, and Chinese businesses are opening their pocketbooks with the aim of establishing a presence internationally. … The script has been flipped. Chinese money can now dictate details of American blockbusters explicitly, not just on the consumer end.”
“Star Wars” Passes “Avatar” To Beat All-Time North American Box Office Record
The studio claims the JJ Abrams film has passed the $760.5m (£520m) taken by Avatar over its lifetime, but has yet to give official figures.
The New Studio Head Who’s Trying To Remake The Entire Hollywood System
“With Simonds’s checkbook, Fogelson was going to demonstrate that you could build a studio without theme parks and television networks to help you market your films, and without anything like the two or three thousand people most studios employ. … He was going to save the industry. And he didn’t expect much thanks.”
Ranking The American Accents Of TV’s Foreign Actors
“From The Walking Dead to The Knick to Jessica Jones, there’s a boatload of actors from the U.K. and Down Under currently imitating us on the small screen. Which means that, in addition to creating credible characters, they have to sound like natives week after week. So, which foreigners deliver consistently convincing American accents, and which are merely paying lip service?”
Fears Of Another All-White Academy Awards
“There’s a strong chance this year’s acting awards will once again be heavily, perhaps exclusively, white, despite the efforts of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to diversify the organization.”
TV Is Changing. Getting Better. Here’s Why
“Contrary to what the headlines often suggest, the internet—or rather, broadband distribution—hasn’t come to kill television. Instead, it’s radically improving it.”
Chuck Norris Karate-Chops Through The Iron Curtain
Director Ilinca Calugareanu talks about her new film, Chuck Norris vs. Communism which looks at how Hollywood action movies offered Romanians living behind the Iron Curtain a glimpse into Western culture, and helped spark a revolution.” (audio)
Oscars Still So White (What’s Up With That?)
“The academy found itself on the defensive last year when white actors earned all 20 of the nominations in the lead and supporting categories. The topic came to define the Academy Awards so much that host Neil Patrick Harris opened the ceremony by quipping: ‘Tonight we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest. Sorry, brightest.'”