Category: media

Chicago landed a perverse cultural honor and joined an exclusive club for which membership itself serves as a loud, international reminder that your city matters. In other words, we’re about to get our butts handed to us in a great big special-effects action picture. Toasted, flattened, manhandled, banged up, blown apart, brought down.”

“Atlanta-based Bounce TV will be an over-the-air channel supported by sponsors, showing programs for blacks ages 25 to 54. It is designed to be carried on the digital signals of local television stations, and it doesn’t necessarily want to compete with existing cable networks like BET, TV One or Centric, said Ryan Glover, a former Turner Broadcasting executive and member of the Bounce leadership team.”

“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which nearly did away with its 41-year-old film program two years ago before a public outcry reversed the decision, announced Wednesday morning that it had entered into partnership with Film Independent to create a new film series.”

“It’s an original and uncharted subject for a movie: A transgender hair-salon worker blossoms into a masked crusader who battles homophobia in Indonesia.”

“It has agreed to pay $320 million for virtually all the assets of the troubled home-video chain, making it the winner of a bankruptcy auction that began Monday.”

The unions released a statement decrying “Illegal downloading and streaming of the content made by our members” and stating that those practices “pose a devastating threat to the future of the hundreds of thousands of working men and women who make up the American entertainment industry.”

A theory called the “uncanny valley” says we tend to feel attracted to inanimate objects with human traits, the way a teddy bear or a rag doll seems cute. Our affection grows as an object looks more human. But if it looks too human, we suddenly become repulsed.

“Scotland’s flagship film festival is embroiled in more controversy after it emerged three major industry figures are no longer involved in this year’s event – just months after they were named at the launch. Actress Tilda Swinton, and former directors Mark Cousins and Linda Myles, will not be overseeing this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival under another dramatic re-think for the event.”

“Moore told Page Six, ‘No settlement. No interest in one. Discovery and depositions will reveal how the accounting is done, once and for all. … Moore sued the Weinsteins in February, alleging they still owe him $2.7 million from [the film] and accused them of using ‘financial deception’ and ‘bogus accounting methods’ to divert money he claims he should have been paid.”

Mark Oppenheimer: “NPR is the most resounding media success story of the past 40 years. … [It] has thrived on FM radio during the era in which FM radio has lost audience, not to mention cachet. … Here, it is instructive to compare NPR’s history with that of its hideous, ugly televised brother, PBS.”