Category: media

“Comedy Central’s quandary is almost paradoxically acute: What does a television network do when its bread-and-butter demographic — young, piracy-fluent, glued to phones — stops watching television?”

In opting for more pictures, the Academy has risked tarnishing the value of a nomination. “It’s hard to find 10 movies that should be nominated,” says producer and former studio chief Bill Mechanic. “Truth is, it’s hard to find even five right now.”

“What’s great about film is it constantly reinvents itself. It started as a sheer novelty, those images moving on the screen. Then it went and every step of the way a new technology started being added — sound, color. What happens is the film grammar of storytelling evolves and changes as well. The technology goes directly with the evolution of the storytelling.”

“Though I keep listening out of animal curiosity for what comes next, I am almost never surprised. I always feel as if I’m shopping somewhere, and the music reflects What Our Customers Like to Listen To. The experience can feel benignly inhuman.”

The Best Foreign Film category’s “apparent magnanimity was said to have emanated out of a desire to celebrate great international works, but many saw right through it: it was at least as much about giving Academy members a specific way of honoring foreign language films so that they wouldn’t necessarily feel compelled to honor them in categories in which Hollywood films were also competing.”

“It’s been a phenomenal six months for blockbusters, with Avengers; Age of Ultron and Fast and Furious 7 also breaking the $1bn barrier – an achievement that was almost unheard of until a few years ago.”

“Once an afterthought, the two-hour studio tour has become a significant and increasingly fast-growing business for Warner Bros. The tour employs about 200 tour guides and support staff, up from a handful a decade ago.”

“Analysts predict that if Netflix were measured as a 24-hour station by Nielsen, it would have more viewers than ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox within the year.”

“On Wednesday, PBS said that an investigation into the controversy showed that Mr. Affleck had exerted “improper influence” over the editorial process and that the producers of the show, Mr. Gates included, had erred by not informing the network of the actor’s “efforts to affect program content.” PBS said it would postpone the third season of the show until a fact-checker was hired and an “independent genealogist” was added to the show’s staff. PBS also will not show Mr. Affleck’s episode anymore and removed it from its online archive.”

“So much of what passes for critical thought these days puts numbers ahead of words, as consensus trumps individuality. Who are we to argue with a score on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, its main rival? (Jurassic World scored a so-so 59 per cent on Metacritic.) What you see happening are a lot of movies being critically deemed good (or good enough) but far fewer that are unassailably considered great.”