Category: media

“I don’t mean to sound cynical, but when I look at the films nominated for Best Picture, I can’t help but feel disappointed that such a glittery, bloated event, which costs roughly $38 million to produce, doesn’t have more substance to justify its self-congratulatory pride.”

“NBC said it worked with Olympic officials to stop some 45,000 instances of illegally posted video or pirate streams that surfaced to show competition during the Sochi games.”

“One disquieting finding from my research is that this year’s lead actors average 85 minutes on screen, but lead actresses average only 57 minutes.”

“‘Gravity’? I’ve seen better things at planetariums,” while Julia Roberts “was horrendous” and Meryl Streep gave “a bottom-drawer performance” in “August: Osage County.”

“Over the last 20 years, 11 winners of the best director Academy Award — arguably second in prestige to best picture at Tinseltown’s biggest annual show — have been from outside the United States.”

It was the video that launched a thousand riots (and, just maybe, in part, the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi). The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Google to remove all copies of the anti-Muslim potboiler from YouTube – on copyright grounds. (And it’s on copyright grounds that Google will appeal.)

Eugene Volokh explains the ruling point by point.

“Over a similar 11-day period, there was a 430 percent increase in tweets about the show from 2013 to 2014. Last year, the firm recorded 254,460 tweets; this year, the number was 1,350,400. In fact, more tweets were written about “House of Cards” 10 days after its debut in 2014 than on the day of the series premiere in 2013.”

“Among those who responded to the online survey, Somali piracy thriller “Captain Phillips” was the most-watched film, at 15 percent. But 67 percent said they had yet to see any of the eleven films in the poll.”