Category: media

After all, as she’s been saying for years, she wasn’t the one who came up with the idea. She simply put it in a comic strip, where it was eventually noticed.

This is why Twitter and Facebook shouldn’t make video play automatically.

A portion of the “Keep or Kill” chapter from Jessica Abel’s graphic non-fiction book Out on the Wire.

“When the media, communications and information industries make up nearly 8% our GDP, larger than the car and oil and gas industries put together, we need to be heard, as those industries are heard. But when I see the panel of experts who’ve been asked by the culture secretary to take a root and branch look at the BBC, I don’t see anyone who is a part of that cast and crew list. I see executives, media owners, industry gurus, all talented people – but not a single person who’s made a classic and enduring television show.”

“It’s not just that the likes of Spike Lee and Hal Hartley have had to go to Kickstarter to fund their projects: Frederick Wiseman and Abel Ferrara have seen their recent crowdfunding campaigns fail. “Having lived and worked in an era with fewer players and a lot more money, many of these artists are now faced with shrinking budgets and crowded release windows … If they want to continue making features, it seems they’ll have to get used to it. Which begs the question, is it still worth it?”

“Internationally, the studio has four of the top five highest-grossing films of the year: Fast & Furious 7 (No. 1 with $1.162 billion), Jurassic World (No. 2 with $983.5 million), Minions (No. 4 with $670.2 million) and Fifty Shades of Grey (No. 5 with $404.1 million).”

“In the first of a new series on early cinema, we celebrate the landmark year … when the industry as we know it was born. Plus, five films from 1915 to watch (which aren’t Birth of a Nation).” (includes video clips, of course)

“Netflix’s move into the film — and film festival — business has proved controversial. At Cannes in May, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos was lambasted by French reporters. One accused him and his company of destroying Europe’s ‘film ecosystem’ by drawing audiences away from theaters.”

“Diversity isn’t one thing; it’s a lot of things. It’s in front of the camera and behind it, in writers’ rooms and executive offices. It’s not exclusively about race and gender and sexuality, but about other things as well. It’s about the bland and unremarked-upon affluence of almost all television families, and the fact that TV doesn’t incorporate very many people who go to church, and all the other ways that it historically looks at the population through a keyhole. And it’s about what stories you tell.”