Category: media

“If there ever was a Golden Age for the CBC, it is now. And yet, in the full sunshine of its success, shadows are appearing everywhere. The federal budget cut the CBC by $115-million. This is roughly 12 per cent of the approximately $1-billion that it receives annually from the federal government.”

“After two failed attempts and 80 years of on-and-off efforts, the members of SAG and AFTRA have voted to merge. The new organization, called SAG-AFTRA, was born Friday afternoon.”

Best April Fool’s joke ever from Google? (There’s an actual, kind of enjoyable, game involved.)

“It was never about bright clothes, eccentric hats and slippers with bells on them. Shakespeare’s fools were the stand-ups of their day and liked to expose the vain, mock the pompous and deliver a few home truths – however uncomfortable that might be for those on the receiving end.”

“Action films meant something. As surely as the film noir communicated anxiety over postwar urban upheaval or as alien-invasion films helped us work out our cold-war agita, the action films of the golden age were a post-’70s, poststagflation collective national fantasy: one in which America was strong, independent, unstoppable and perpetually kicking much butt.” That’s over.

“After decades of the cold shoulder, why is Snow White suddenly white hot? Maria Tartar is a Harvard professor with an expertise in fairytales. ‘It may be that there is something about the boomer anxiety about aging that is renewing our interest in Snow White,’ she says. ‘In the Disney film, there’s that terrible moment, that terrifying moment when the Wicked Queen drinks the potion, turns into an old hag, and we see the aging process.'”

“The main thing to keep in mind is that the CBC has been asking for trouble. It has failed to defend itself adequately. It has been naive. For CBC, and all its radio, TV and online platforms, this Prime Minister is an implacable foe, as imperious in his dismissal of Canadian TV news as he is in dismissing anything that smacks of that European welfare state. For the government, the CBC is a symbol that must be diminished and denigrated.”

“The public broadcaster will see 10 per cent taken from its current $1.1-billion budget as part of a $5.2-billion cut to federal spending over three years.”

“A scimitars’n’CGI blockbuster account of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in the 15th century, it is the country’s most expensive film ever ($17m budget), most popular (4.6m tickets in its first 18 days) and most lucrative ($29m and counting). But if you think the smell of unanimity is in the air, think again. Plenty of folk have queued up to question Fetih 1453‘s take.”

“A federal judge has a blocked a request for a temporary injunction that would have scuttled a vote on merging the Screen Actors Guild with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Ed Asner, Martin Sheen and Ed Harris were among a group of actors who filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles last month seeking an injunction to stop SAG from calling for a vote on the proposed merger with AFTRA.”