Category: media

“These documentary films, just a minute or two long, were called actualities; they had no plots, stories or characters. They were soon supplanted by story films, Mr. Sanders wrote, especially chase scenes with police officers and criminals.”

“I felt that was a great way to introduce the conflict of the people. To humanize and validate themselves is part of the struggle, but the other struggle is just to obtain a few dollars. The story of their night could be making $5.”

Marketing expert: “Personally, I think that that’s probably not enough of an effort.”

“The move seems risky. What if people dump their regular HBO subscriptions? What if the cable providers, who generate virtually all of HBO’s $5.4 billion in revenue, remain displeased by this run around them? What if Now, which may feature content never before seen on HBO, is less consistently excellent than the existing HBO service? And what if this pushes Netflix to become even more aggressive?”

“Movies are, for the most part, made up of short runs of continuous action, called shots, spliced together with cuts. With a cut, a filmmaker can instantaneously replace most of what is available in your visual field with completely different stuff. This is something that never happened in the 3.5 billion years or so that it took our visual systems to develop. You might think, then, that cutting might cause something of a disturbance when it first appeared. And yet nothing in contemporary reports suggests that it did.”

“CBC management is squarely to blame for allowing disgraced radio host Jian Ghomeshi to get away for years with inappropriate behaviour that included sexual harassment,” concluded an independent investigation by two employment lawyers.

Each turns its audience into a protagonist, and suggests new directions for storytelling that go beyond traditional cinema—while perhaps invigorating that medium. “It makes you realize that there’s a bigger toolbox out there.”

It’s a sign of the surging quality of television. “Given how many filmmakers work in television, it’s certainly a natural fit from a creator standpoint.”

“The on-demand video company said Wednesday that it added a record 4.9 million customers from January to March, with more than half of that number coming from overseas. Netflix said its 62.3 million subscribers watched some 10 billion hours of programming during the first quarter.”

“So, are tax credits a great way of supporting culture? Are they helping create Canadian films and Canadian video games? They may be, but that’s not really their purpose; their intention is simply to create jobs and thus generate a lot more tax revenue for government than was initially paid out.”