Category: media

When Filmmakers Make Films In Languages They Don’t Speak Well

“It is a truth universally acknowledged in world cinema that a celebrated auteur, making their first film outside their native tongue, must be preparing a dud.” But is it actually true? Well, there are a few success stories such as Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth and Alps in Greek, then The Lobster and Oscar-winner The Favourite in English), but only a few. – The Guardian

The Streaming Wars Are Bringing On A New Media Dystopia

The return to piracy is both a bit of a meme and a bit of a reality. And its return is absolutely the result of a market that giant companies have built to intentionally trap customers into either a single-company ecosystem (one ISP, one easy streaming service) or an annoying, expensive patchwork. And while piracy signals discontent with the system, it’s quite unlikely that these companies will react by changing their approach, let alone lowering prices. – Slate

Turns Out That People Who Are Likely To Pay For Streaming Services Are Also Likely To Pirate Shows

At least, that’s true in Australia, according to the results of a recent survey. The more services you subscribed to, the more likely you were to pirate. That’s a little weird, right? Well … “Electronic Frontiers Australia board member Justin Warren said people who were paying for multiple subscriptions were likely turning to piracy out of frustration at not being able to find what they wanted on the services they were paying for.” – The Guardian (UK)

Berlin Film Festival’s Gender Parity Scorecard Is Mostly Good, But Not All Good

The good: Leadership. “Its festival directorships were shared equally between men and women, and … its executive board was similarly balanced.”
The less good: Director numbers. “The majority of films shown at the competition were still made by male directors. At this year’s festival, 37.9% of films were directed by women, and six of the 18 films in competition were directed by women, which is down from seven last year.” – The Guardian (UK)

France Can’t See What’s Erotic About Two Women Falling For Each Other

This is the weirdest possible sentence to write, but director Céline Sciamma says that Portrait of a Lady on Fire isn’t considered erotic in, of all places, France. What? WHAT? Quoi?? Sciamma: “It’s a very bourgeois industry. There’s resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. ‘A film can be feminist?’ They don’t know this concept. They don’t read the book. They don’t even know about the fact that ‘male gaze’ exists. You can tell it’s a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy.” – The Guardian (UK)

Vine Started The Short Video Craze, And Then Died – But It May Be Back

Vine was introduced in 2012, bought by Twitter, and killed in 2016. But in its time, it “turned everyday people into stars on other platforms and beyond. Its musical whims warped the music industry. It cultivated memes that might have been dismissed as inside jokes if not for their tendency to flourish outside the app.” Can the app make a comeback in 2020, where TikTok rules the internet? – The New York Times