Cinemark's Movie Club ($10 monthly for one movie) has 1 million active members, and AMC's Stubs A-List ($19.95 a month for 3 movies a week) has nearly that many. Regal Unlimited offers unlimited movies starting at $18 per month. Here's a Q&A with Cinemark's CEO about the program. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions about the government’s reach at a time when deciphering propaganda from fact has become increasingly difficult. - Los Angeles Times
“I (told Spielberg), ‘I always felt like I could play a conductor, but may I research the material and see if I can write it and direct it? Would you let me do that?’” Cooper said. - Variety
He was born into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1879; his grandparents had survived the Trail of Tears. "Despite his consistent and very vocal pride about being Indigenous, his image did not fit with the public's assumptions of what a Native American ought to look like." - The Criterion Collection
The winner was Triangle of Sadness, a Swedish comedy (because class war is hilarious) by Ruben Ostlund, who also won in 2017 for the art-world sendup The Square. - NPR
If so, despite massively climbing COVID-19 numbers, which one is going to dominate the summer? (Probably dinos, but what about the little French-ish shell?) - Vulture
Good question. The boring answer - "A production designer works with the director and the producer (or showrunner) to build a story’s world." - can lead to an exciting chase for the right designs all over town, the internet, and the world. - Los Angeles Times
"There are so many TV awards consultants spending a good chunk of the year on campaigns that we’re often pitched by three or four different people on the same show or star. There’s usually an awkward back-and-forth. ... It's not a perfect system." Indeed. - Variety
This isn't new; it's been going on for nearly a century, but Top Gun really highlights the results. "Each service – army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard – has its own entertainment liaison office in Los Angeles, in addition to the Pentagon’s own office." - The Guardian (UK)
Beyond Alaska's few cities, APR's stations are sometimes the only local ones available, "mixing Morning Edition with all flavors of music, emergency announcements, swap-and-shop shows and personal announcements for family members in remote, roadless villages. ... The station managers and engineers who keep it running are the unsung heroes." - Current
Lawmakers in Denmark have agreed global TV streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, must pay a levy of 6% of their revenue in the country to support local TV production. - Reuters
Robbie Praw, who spent 12 years as programmer at Just for Laughs in Montreal before joining Netflix in 2016, talks about how he chooses which comedians to present, whether Netflix is focusing too much on "politically incorrect" material, and mounting the company's, and Los Angeles's, first-ever major comedy festival. - Vulture
"They serve as field reporting, pleas for weapons, arias that glorify Ukraine. But the videos have done more than win Ukraine moral and military support. They have created a serialized manifesto — one that makes the case for liberal democracy over oligarchic autocracy, ... clarifying, day by day, democracy's reason for being." - Wired
