Category: media

“According to some scholars, Sarah Jessica Parker’s much-scrutinized protagonist is a feminist icon; according to others, she’s a post-feminist icon. She’s a philosopher in the 19th-century European tradition and the quintessential damsel in distress, a gay-rights poster child in Asia and somehow also a xenophobic bigot.”

“Hollywood maintained its dominance of the world’s fifth biggest movie market with Fox’s “Ice Age 4: Continental Drift” grossing $50 million to take top place and, for the first time in a decade, not a single Russian film in the top 10.”

“Shots of a Chinese character being killed and dialogue referring to prostitution and politics were either edited out or left obscured in subtitles.”

“Professional gaming, or e-sports, exploded in popularity in the US and Europe last year. The scene has been big in Asia – particularly South Korea – for about a decade, with top players … earning six-figure salaries and competing for rock-star glory in Starcraft tournaments that attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

“The chain has 528 stores and employs 4,190 staff. Deloitte, the accountancy firm which will now take over running the firm, said Blockbuster would keep trading while it tries to find a buyer.”

“Gross theatrical box-office revenue in Canada for 2012 was close to $1.1-billion, a 9-per-cent increase over 2011. Canadian movies accounted for around 2.5 per cent of that, grossing, as of Dec. 21, $25.06-million, a drop of roughly 12 per cent from 2011.”

“As it turns out, Golden Globe awards result in a bigger box-office boost than Academy Award wins – $14.2 million per film, on average, versus $3 million, according to my statistical analysis.”

“As SiriusXM approaches 24 million subscribers, this once-minor player in promoting songs has become a proving ground for new bands, a steppingstone between the Internet and breaking into the rotation at big FM radio stations.”

“You look at the top scripted shows on cable, and they are all pretty heavy duty. These are not some small cultural little things that people like. The top drama on television now is a show where people get their heads blown off at point-blank range.”

Films on this theme “are always informed, and their reception shaped, by politics of the era in which they were created. It’s as true now for Zero Dark Thirty as it was for a series of films in the 1980s that made none of the claims of journalistic rigor that director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have made.” Consider, for instance, Rambo III.