Category: media

“By joining Le Vision Pictures, the filmmaking arm of the online film and TV portal LeTV, the 61-year-old director brings an end to his spell as an unattached artist after his acrimonious split last year with longtime producer Zhang Weiping.”

For James Gray (We Own the Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant), “Cannes offers the kind of institutional legitimation he has not often received in the United States. … At Cannes he is not simply another director, he is one of this festival’s chosen auteurs as well as a celebrity in his own right.”

“Why do we binge watch? One way to answer this question is to say, well, we binge on TV for the same reason we binge on food. For a sense of security, creature comfort, to make the world go away. And these psychological factors are no doubt apt.”

A tub-thumping Turkish romance titled Selam and two upcoming biopics of the Prophet Muhammad (one Sunni, one Shia) are among “several projects currently aiming to make a piercing statement on behalf of Islam with cinema, a medium – because of the nature of image-making – with which this religious tradition arguably has compatibility issues.”

“News about Google Glass is everywhere these days, and so are its critics. … Nonetheless, most agree that a smartphone-linked display and camera placed in the corner of your vision is intriguing and potentially revolutionary – and like us, they want to try it. But Glass may inadvertently disrupt a crucial cognitive capacity, with potentially dangerous consequences.”

“Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was the best director award doing to 34-year-old Mexican director Amat Escalante, whose ‘Heli’ unnerved many with scenes of torture involving a flambéed penis and a strangled puppy.”

“One of the early and lone champions of the show at CBS was Ethel Winant. She was the only woman in the sort of executive ranks, and so there was an executive bathroom, but there was only one. … So she would leave her high heels outside the door so that men knew she was in there, because there was no lock on the door either.”

“Right now, we’re enjoying a rich new age of images — everything from Vine videos to BuzzFeed cat GIFs that are shared, recast and then shared again. If lawyers began to throw copyright grenades into this mix, these splendid strains of creativity could be quickly snuffed out. “

“The television show has brought worldwide fame to Highclere Castle (which Lady Carnarvon’s husband’s family has owned since the late 17th century), especially among what she calls ‘lots of lovely Americans.’ But the house costs $1.5 million a year to run, and it has not received the windfall that viewers of the show would assume.”

“Mrs. Hodge described the episode as ‘a terrible shock and clearly completely shambolic.’ The corporation said the initiative had been badly managed and outpaced by changing technology, and that to carry on would be throwing good money after bad.”