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Shooting WWII In Color

In part to counteract the skills of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who wasted her great talents on supporting fascism and the Nazis, Hollywood filmmaker George Stevens went to war. - Open Culture

Hollywood Companies Vow To Pay Employees’ Travel And Other Abortion Costs

Many Hollywood companies, and the unions SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild, say they will pay for employees' costs if they need to travel from states like Georgia to other states where a full range of healthcare reproductive services will, for now, be legal. - Los Angeles Times

Peak TV Is Overwhelming, But Emmy Voters Need To Watch It Anyway

Some of these shows and people won't win, but they deserve to be nominated; and the categories deeply need to change to keep up with all of the great TV out there. - NPR

What It Takes To Light Up The Hollywood Sign

It's a surprisingly rare event, and it takes a lot of moxie, permits, projectors, and work. - Los Angeles Times

Netflix Lays Off Almost 3% Of Its Workforce

The streaming giant has let go of 300 employees, just a month after a previous round of 150 layoffs (plus many part-timers and contractors). Since Netflix announced, earlier this year, that it was losing subscribers, its stock value has fallen by just under 70%. - Variety

Canadian Parliament Advances Bill That Would Force Streamers To Promote Canadian Content

It would also apply to platforms including YouTube and Spotify and make them promote Canadian music artists by law. Critics of the bill say that as currently worded, it could also apply to amateur videos and user-generated content posted on YouTube. - Global TV

Streaming On Edge: Companies Crack Down On Password Sharing

It's "an industry falling out of sync with how people use its products. It’s no longer just a cheaper, ad-free alternative to cable, but a crowded field. Netflix’s new zeal for password enforcement breaks the seal on something the streaming companies have long avoided. - Washington Post

The L.A. Times Sets Up Its Own “Meme Team” (And You Won’t See Its Work On LATimes.com)

It's called The 404, and "video — especially on TikTok — (will) be the first priority. Other areas of concentration will be images (think: memes, illustrations, comics, and graphic art); and content for emerging platforms (AR, VR, live streams, and 'stuff that doesn't exist yet')." - Nieman Lab

The Obamas Move Their Media Company From Spotify To Audible

The agreement between the company, called Higher Ground, and Spotify was not renewed because of disagreements over both content and distribution. The new deal with Audible (owned by Amazon) will make Higher Ground available on numerous platforms, not only on Audible, thus addressing one major sticking point with Spotify. - Variety

How Hollywood Turned Graham Greene’s Novel “The Quiet American” Upside-Down

"Greene usually liked to see his novels adapted, but not this time. What Greene was trying to say about American ignorance and arrogance in foreign affairs was distorted ... by a Cold War, McCarthy-era fear of bringing a movie to the public that might be seen as 'anti-American.'" - The Baffler

Has Streaming Made Us Forget How To Watch Movies?

That’s how most movies are experienced today. They are not, as they were for most of their history, seen. They are watched—on TVs, computers, tablets, phones. If you’re an average American, Gallup says, you saw (in theaters) exactly one movie in 2021, and it was probably the new Spider-Man. - Wired

Way Too Much! (Why Streaming Is Choking)

In the fall of 2019, years after it had revolutionized the industry with a slate of boundary-challenging originals and maybe a little drunk with ego, Netflix ushered in what I considered its new normal: the Just OK Era of TV. And mostly, with the occasional exception, the company has stayed in that lane. - Wired

Paramount Will Not Be Removing From Its Streaming Service Old Movies And TV That Might Offend Today

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish: "By definition, you have some things that were made in a different time and reflect different sensibilities. I don't believe in censoring art that was made historically, that's probably a mistake. It's all on demand – you don't have to watch anything you don't want to." - The Guardian

What Will TV Watching Be Like In 15 Years?

Streaming could go a lot of different ways, but how will it go? "Streaming broke our TV-watching culture. ... It's totally fractured now, we don't have this communal TV-watching experience that we once had." But things could change. - Wired

An Animated Movie’s Fake Boy Band Gets Its Own Breakout Success Manga

The boy band 4*Town (with five members) from Turning Red is so popular on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and the music charts (with music by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas) that it's getting a book of its very own. Who's to say what's real? - Variety

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