Category: media

Netflix has acquired all rights to the untitled Leonard Bernstein film that Bradley Cooper will direct, star in and produce from the script he co-wrote with Oscar-winning Spotlight scribe Josh Singer. The project exits Paramount, which set the film as a priority project in May 2018. – Deadline

Just capitalism and sheer wackiness, or what? (Paltrow’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle costs $75 and sold out almost immediately, for one thing.) But there’s more. “The Goop Lab is streaming into a moment in America that finds Medicare for All under discussion and the Affordable Care Act under attack. It presents itself as airy infotainment even as many Americans are unable to access even the most basic forms of medical care. That makes the show deeply uncomfortable to watch.” – The Atlantic

AI-assisted editing won’t make Oscar-­worthy auteurs out of us. But amateur visual storytelling will probably explode in complexity. Even tools for one-to-one video messaging might evolve—AI on our phones could pull together disparate clips into weird, delightful missives. And, of course, AI editing will uncork new forms of digital malfeasance: It’ll be a lot easier to persuasively lie, to make ever-slicker propaganda. – Wired

“[Alice] Guy-Blaché was in the room when the Lumière brothers held the first-ever cinema screening, in Paris in March 1895. By the following year, she was making her own films. And while the Lumières were still hung up on cinema as a technological spectacle – ‘Look! A train!’ – Guy-Blaché immediately saw its potential for telling stories. … As time went on, Guy-Blaché helped write the rules of this brand new medium. She incorporated now-standard techniques such as editing, primitive special effects and hand-tinted colour. She might even have invented the music video.” – The Guardian

The announcement comes as the publicly funded BBC is facing intense political and public pressure amid a fast-changing media landscape and viewing habits. It has been criticized by both sides of the Brexit debate over its coverage of the U.K.’s impending departure from the European Union, and some in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government have suggested changing the BBC’s funding model. – Washington Post (AP)

The Academy’s perceived snubs—of actors such as Us’s Lupita Nyong’o and Hustlers’ Jennifer Lopez, along with directors such as Little Women’s Greta Gerwig and The Farewell’s Lulu Wang—are as unfortunate as they are predictable. And comments like Stephen King’s reveal a major reason why: Diversity is too often discussed as something separate from, or even in conflict with, artistic virtue. – The Atlantic

Concordia Studio was founded two years ago by the multibillionaire widow of Steve Jobs and an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, and this is the year that money and expertise come onto the national (and international) documentary scene. Laurene Powell Jobs: “We are at a moment when cynicism and division are abundant, but we have seen that stories can bring people together. … Concordia is a belief that film has the power to shine a spotlight on the important narratives of life that too often are overlooked.” – The New York Times

If the SAG Awards are any guide – and they can be – Parasite may win best picture; it won best ensemble at the ceremony on Sunday night. “When the Parasite cast, none of whom received individual nominations, earned a warm standing ovation early in the night from the audience of actors at the Shrine Auditorium, while introducing the film, it was clear where the crowd’s affections resided.” – Los Angeles Times

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon created the movie The Big Sick, lightly based on their own lives and romance, and had such success that now they’ve won an Apple TV+ series, Little America, that tells the lightly fictionalized stories of immigrants in unusual situations (or perhaps they’re quite usual – without these stories, how would the public know?). Nanjiani says, “American pop culture is the most widespread in the world, and [pop culture was] selling that second side of America, and we wanted to buy it. You can do what you want to do, be what you want to be. Not everyone in the series believes that, but that’s a key idea.” – The Guardian (UK)