The return rate to movie theaters in the first week of February was 58% of what it was before the pandemic. Restaurants were nearly three-quarters as full as they were before Covid-19, and air travel had recovered to about 80%. - The Wall Street Journal
Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes — "an all-female team with broad appeal and comedic chops" — are in final talks to serve as emcees for the 2022 ceremonies, several sources have indicated. - Variety
Let filmmaker Nancy Myers show Hollywood the way: "Rom-coms typically suggest that thrilling courtship is for people in their 20s and 30s." They fall in love and get married; the end. "In these films by Meyers, though, both protagonists delight in their divorced lives." - The Atlantic
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Amélie who wouldn't bow to Harvey Weinstein, loathes the pressure of theatrical openings. But "with Netflix, half a billion people can see it. ... Even if just 1 percent of those people watch Bigbug, it would be huge." - The New York Times
The actor made 170 movies, only 16 with Kurosawa. "Mifune might not have been working with his favorite director, but watching these, it’s clear that he still brought his expressive physicality, his quicksilver emotion and his unparalleled charisma to the set every day." - The New York Times
We've got an issue with mothers, and let's note that "the idea that they should be constantly emotionally available to their children, monitor them fully, and occupy them with organized activities is a modern, Eurocentric ideal." - The Atlantic
What does that mean? Well: "You don’t need fake popcorn; you don’t need tomatoes; you don’t need other things that are in there. And that’s where we’re looking at it, and it’s something we’re taking seriously that we feel we will have a presence in." - The Verge
OK, he sounded a little like a frat boy while dissing The Power of the Dog, but "the thing that Kimmel was getting at is: Why are the Oscars increasingly severed from the populist side of moviegoing?" - Variety
“We’re looking at this from another point of view,” Stacy Spikes said of the company’s relaunch, adding that he now plans to run the business like a “co-op.” MoviePass users will be able to hold partial ownership of the company, with its most premium tier inclusive of a lifetime subscription. - The Verge
"Stars Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria and writer David X. Cohen, among others, share new insights and secrets about the 'ballsy' episode that thumbed its nose at Hollywood brass and pushed back against viewers already claiming that the Fox show was far past its prime." - The Hollywood Reporter
Operated by artist studios, collectives, and production companies, these projects range in finesse from sophisticated new-media installations to animated retrospectives of Impressionist painters. - The New Yorker
Disney added 11.8 million Disney+ subscribers globally in the fiscal first quarter, topping the average analyst estimate of around 7 million, according to StreetAccount. - CNBC
By this point Dear Evan Hansen and In the Heights feel much farther away than West Side Story, Encanto, and Tick,Tick ... Boom!, but they all came out in 2021. And, writes Jackson McHenry, most of them came out better than had seemed the case a few months ago. - Vulture
“Dune,” the sprawling first installment of Denis Villeneuve’s ambitious adaptation of the 1965 science fiction novel, was the only nominated film that could claim to be a classic box office success, having earned more than $100 million in bricks-and-mortar theaters. - Washington Post
