Category: media

Richard Brody: “The film was intended to serve as prologues to the three acts of Welles’s stage production of the play Too Much Johnson … [It] is far more than a curiosity; it’s a major rediscovery, one that deeply traces the roots of Welles’s art, both stylistically and thematically.”

“Like every other gigantic business, Hollywood wants to sell its products in China. But selling movies in China is different from selling bubble gum or Coke. The country’s official gatekeeper, the China Film Group, allows in only 34 foreign films per year, a number recently raised from only 20.”

So when we look at our wealthy capital city and see a group of people getting everything wrong, sometimes lying, and generally turning into that mean pimp, we want someone to show us why this is happening. We want a story that will impose some explanatory order on Washington’s horribleness. Each new show about Washington – one after the other after the other after the other – does that.”

“Audience ratings have collapsed: Aside from a brief respite during the Olympics, there has been only negative ratings growth on broadcast and cable TV since September 2011, according to Citi Research.”

“My guys sing to Sinaloa–they’re Chapo people. They have to be very careful. They don’t book shows in other peoples’ territories. When they go on the mic, they say, ‘Hello to Culiacan!’ but they’ll never say hello to Reynosa, because that’s controlled by a different cartel. You have to stay with your team.”

The company has plans for more reality TV, a martial arts series on Netflix, some BBC offerings, British crime dramas, Italian mob dramas – and way more.

Director Alexander Payne: “We see the hegemony of commercial U.S. cinema trying to crush that around the world, at least in terms of distribution. … I want to see American films about Americans like we used to have, not American films which are all cartoons intended to be digested easily the world over.”

Americans spent almost $10 billion (yes, billion) more on video games and gaming consoles than on movie tickets in 2012. That’s only going to get more intense this year.

That’s right, it’s time for a biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien. But will this one succeed with his notoriously touchy estate?