“A location scout was preparing for the day’s filming when a single bullet killed him instantly. The cast and crew continued undeterred. That is the bargain when you sign up to produce a rebel television series in the wartime Syrian city of Aleppo with little pay, no insurance and militias that want you dead.”
Category: media
Movie Analysts Say Hollywood On Track For A Record Year At The Box Office
“The most optimistic box-office prognosticators say the industry will notch $11.2 billion in ticket sales in 2015, beating last year by 9% and setting a record for North America, not adjusted for inflation. Piper Jaffray analyst James Marsh this week increased his full-year estimate to $10.9 billion from $10.8 billion. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has also increased his projection by a percentage point to $11 billion.”
Tempest In A British Teapot: Complaints About Clenched Buttocks In ‘Mr. Turner’
“Timothy Spall’s clenched buttocks” – clothed, no less – “in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner were the subject of 19 letters of complaint to the British Board of Film Classification.”
Why ‘The Act Of Killing’ Director Made A Second Documentary – With A Survivor Of The Mass Murders Confronting The Murderers
Joshua Oppenheimer (The Look of Silence): “Imagine you have to go to weddings and funerals and socialize politely with people who murdered your children because you’re too afraid to actually speak out and confront them. That takes a tremendous toll on our humanity.” (video interview and film clip)
Ira Glass Takes Full Ownership Of ‘This American Life’
“Both [Chicago Public Media] and WBEZ will still benefit from This American Life, having agreed to kick over their shares in exchange for a portion of future profits from both TAL and Serial. In turn, all 22 employees of This American Life will become Glass’s employees.”
We Need Puppets To Keep Making Fun Of Us, Say French Politicians
When the owner of the television network Canal+ said that the satirical show Les Guignols de l’Info (roughly, “The News Puppets”) said that there was “a bit too much mockery” of politicians, and there were suggestions that the program would be canceled, it was the subjects of the mockery who leapt to the Guignols’ defense.
Why There’s So Much Nostalgia For The Lost TV Of One’s Youth (And Why It’s Better To Let Those Shows Go)
“Our nostalgia is greedy. It’s not enough to look back fondly on the past; now we are rebooting it. Our nostalgia compels us to go beyond rewatching dusty old VCR tapes, to actually wanting fleeting childhood obsessions to be revived and re-enacted to fit our own times.”
All Of Our Digital Photos Are Going To (Bit) Rot, And We Should Print Them All
“Millions of people could lose their entire photo collections. This may sound trite until you consider that many people even have critical image like the birth of a child stored in the cloud. Not wise. Our entire photographic history from the past decade is literally at risk.”
The Wolfpack Brothers’ Obsessive Remakes Of Films Show Us How To Do It Right
And for the siblings, who were locked in their apartment all of their lives by their father, things are working out: “The Tribeca Film Institute has commissioned them to reenact a clutch of Robert DeNiro films, while the San Francisco Film Institute hired them to recreate scenes from three iconic films that take place in the City by the Bay: Mrs. Doubtfire, Dirty Harry, and Sister Act.”
As Radio Shuts Down In Many Countries, BBC World Service Powers Up
“The most striking thing in the report, which tracked listening habits and how they had changed over the past year, was how short-wave radio – in rural and poorer areas where there is no FM, no cable and no electricity, it’s still the only way of tuning in – is under increasing threat from something as basic as jamming.”