Category: media

The Alexandria Film Festival removed Reis Çelik’s Night of Silence from the program not because of sensitive subject matter (forced child marriage) but because of Turkish prime minister Erdogan’s outspoken opposition to the military overthrow of Egypt’s Islamist government.

“Following a yearlong financial crisis, as government funding cuts and the loss of evening advertising resulted in a massive budget shortfall, public broadcaster wseeks to cut costs as part of its recovery plan.”

“Much of what’s great about Interiors comes from Allen writing a piercing drama, straight from the heart; much of what’s bad about Interiors comes from his arid feints at duplicating a master.”

“According to the Motion Picture Association of America, at the end of 2012, 84 percent of U.S. movie theater screens were digital. Starting this winter, it will become essentially impossible for the remaining theaters to find first-run films from major studios on 35mm, meaning they’ll have to settle for showing older or independent films that won’t bring in enough traffic to remain profitable.”

Lawrence Pintak finds that the news network hardly offered the “inflammatory programming” some conservative groups warned of. “Think NPR with pictures (and a little political baggage). The reporting was solid, the few ‘expert’ guests really were experts, interviews were, for the most part, intelligent, and the rundowns were a predictable mixture of the top stories of the day. ”

Yes, there are 50 creative types behind Will Ferrell in L.A. who keep the content coming. But it takes money guys and techies to build and maintain a site with 19 million unique monthly visitors and 62.5 million monthly video views. Here’s a Q&A with the three people who run FunnyOrDie’s Silicon Valley side.

“Twenty years ago, South Korean directors dealt with heavy-handed state censorship and worked under protectionist laws, insulating local artists from American competition. But an economic boom in the late 1990s fired up a generation of directors who, like the Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers before them, have built up global recognition.” GlobalPost introduces four of them.

“Like never before, nerd culture has been co-opted by cool culture. This isn’t your weird Uncle Gerry’s Comic Con anymore, geeks.”

“People staring at their tablet screens are more likely to watch a commercial and remember it.”

“The revision of the Tchaikovsky script plays into concerns that the law will prompt self-censorship. The vaguely worded legislation includes fines of up to £2,000 for the ‘imposition of information about non-traditional sexual relations’ in the mass media.”