Category: media

“A heated Chinese business and political dispute that has stopped about $200 million in box-office payments to Hollywood studios appears near a resolution, just as outlines of the fight were first emerging in public.”

“Well, I think the first thing that would happen is you would say the fundamental, most important part of the story is that he dies – [and that] he is victorious, he beats the machine. It’s the triumph of the human spirit over technology. But with that comes a price. And all the studio execs would say, ‘Absolutely. That’s what we love about this story.’ Two drafts later somebody would say, ‘Does he have to die?'” Screenwriter Damon Lindelof walks us through the studios’ likely development process.

The appointment of Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff is “another milestone for women on television and in journalism, seven years after Katie Couric became the first female solo anchor of a network nightly newscast. PBS noted in a news release that ‘this will mark the first time a network broadcast has had a female co-anchor team’.”

“[The show’s producers] should keep in mind the way people’s hopes are lifted when they see someone breaking the glass ceiling, even when it’s for something as seemingly trivial as a hero on a science-fiction program.”

“Because while Avatar was arguably instrumental in pushing more filmmakers to use 3-D (for better or worse), it really does seem to have otherwise largely vanished from the cultural landscape. … So what happened?” David Haglund has some ideas.

Basically? Develop more good shows – or so it hopes.

“Orange Is the New Black” is “the yuppie’s view of prison, said Jenji Kohan, who adapted Ms. Kerman’s book for TV.”

TV critics, according to their annual award ceremony, also like The Americans, Game of Thrones, Orphan Black, and Louis C.K.

The wandering, chaotic films “are attracting ever more sizable audiences, especially younger people who have been weaned on cheap editing software, platforms such as Tumblr and the archival riches at YouTube and UbuWeb.”

“When trying to access a full episode of any CBS show, like Elementary or Two and a Half Men, those with Time Warner Cable internet will see an attack ad instead of their normal programming.”