Category: media

“The slowing volume of production has ramifications that extend far beyond the small community of Canadian filmmakers, the report suggests. … The industry has lost the equivalent of 4,000 full-time jobs since 2008.”

“Television remains a collective experience, and ‘House of Cards’ was occurring outside the social pale — a humbling experience for those who attempt to drive the conversation. But more important, it’s a hugely contrarian argument in the digital universe.”

“Change has been difficult, they have said, because the film industry is not very diverse in the first place, and slow because the academy has been limiting membership growth for the last decade.”

“If we know one thing about soap opera characters, it’s that when they die, it’s not always permanent. It turns out the same is true of these soaps.”

“Everywhere you go it seems as if all anyone wants to talk about is TV. Watching the boob tube used to be the couch potato’s hobby, hardly a subject to trot out over cocktails. Now, that stigma has vanished, and a few knowing remarks about “House of Cards” can confer gravitas.”

“People love TV viewing, but they hate linear TV, including DVRs and cable VOD services.”

“Amazon delivered its first bundle of original content on Friday, pilots for eight comedies (and six children’s shows) that could become series on Amazon Instant Video. The digital twist is that not only can the public see these pilots, but it can also rate and review them, information Amazon says it will weigh in deciding which series are made.”

The $25,000 award, presented by the Tribeca Film Festival to a “woman writer or director with a distinctive voice, went to filmmaker Meera Menon for Farah Goes Bang, a road comedy about three friends working on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

“No one, save perhaps the producers of This American Life, has better mastered the radio narrative formula, which requires a steady drumbeat of change. It seems simple enough until you consider the poem-like compression the form requires, and which sometimes allows a writer as skillful as Sedaris to condense something novel-size into 15 or 20 minutes’ worth of words meant to be spoken.”

“In fictional Gotham City, Batman protects citizens from crime. Here, at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, another Dark Knight is on a different kind of crusade: making sure soldiers carry their rifles and don’t get run over at night.”