Category: media

“With this film I have the caveat of knowing that it will be simplistic and reductive to people who live in Iran. … I can’t create an Iranian masterpiece out of this situation. I don’t have that ear. … So I wanted to create kind of palettes that were – not innocuous, but bland enough that the audience could easily dismiss them … as the eccentricities of one oppressive regime.”

Dow Jones’s CEO wrote in a memo that “it will come as no surprise that in order to do even more, we must do fewer things that are not core to our business so that we can move faster in pursuit of our goals.” In the comments section (!), award-winning business journalist David Cay Johnston provides analysis.

Okay, we could call it “G.I. Joe will train your dragon,” but negotiations are in an advanced state.

“The first crop of video gamers are facing middle age with no plans to put down the controller. So the games have to grow up too. Expect less blood splatter, more reflection.” (audio podcast)

Is this serious? Maybe a little bit. (Hint: Think of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.)

“I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game, and … I want to go out while I’m still hard.”

“Not only does the 33-year-old Wetten, dass …? seem to confirm a lot of the world’s less generous stereotypes of Germans – e.g. humorless, weird, with terrible taste in formalwear – its concept is also awkwardly difficult to explain. … The concept: Invite a mixture of German and Hollywood celebrities onto a live stage, interview them, and then make them wager whether a number of ordinary Germans can complete a series of stunts.” And those stunts can be positively bizarre.

“CNN said its English-language news channel would not be available after the end of the year ‘in light of recent changes in Russian media legislation’. Russia has banned advertising on cable and satellite channels, while also preventing foreign companies from owning more than 20 per cent of media outlets from 2016.”

“Russia launched a new state-funded foreign news service Monday to challenge the ‘aggressive propaganda’ of the West and provide an ‘alternative interpretation’ of global events. The new media brand, Sputnik, is the reworked foreign language service of the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency and Voice of Russia radio.”

The Radio Academy Awards – for decades formerly, the Sony Awards – won’t happen, but the Academy says it plans “to create a new event to ‘celebrate and reflect the radio industry in a dynamic and modern way’ for the digital age.”