Well: "Changing the Academy Awards, a 93-year-old American institution, has typically proven an exercise in futility. Tweaks have been tried along the way, yet the basic format has been stubbornly immutable." Maybe this year will be different? Hope dies hard in Hollywood. - Boston Globe (AP)
Right now, though not only right now, there's an issue with Black horror. "Black horror faces a distinct paradox: The genre has long been a valuable tool for creators of different backgrounds to process their traumas, and for audiences to reckon with their own. Some Black writers and producers in America use horror and science fiction as a lens through...
Yes, it's Philly. Despite how much those of us outside the area might think we know it, "the characters in Rocky don’t talk like they’re from Philadelphia. Neither do the ones in Silver Linings Playbook or The Irishman. For all the stories that have been set in and around the city, there’s a pronounced lack of authenticity when it comes to speaking the...
TV networks spend about $100 million a year in developing pilots for series. Only a small number get to the schedule. Even fewer become ratings successes. So there's an awful lot of very weird failed pilots out there... - Tedium
Last week the video-rental-service-turned-streaming-giant paid an estimated $1 billion for five-year exclusive U.S. rights to Sony's theatrical releases and right of first refusal for the studio's direct-to-streaming productions. If Netflix is going to spend that kind of money, shouldn't it have just bought Sony outright? It's what many people expected, and all the other major Hollywood studios have been...
Through the trade group Video Advertising Bureau, the networks are perplexed by Nielsen statistics that show the percentage of Americans who watched their televisions at least some time during the week declined from 92% in 2019 to 87% so far this year. - Toronto Star (AP)
Censorship ain’t what it used to be, including in Ireland. Here, as elsewhere, it’s been replaced by a different C-word. The last Irish film censor, John Kelleher, was instrumental in seeing through legislative reform which in 2008 renamed and redefined his office: he was now a Classifier of films. As a result, the curtain was finally lowered on a...
"Pacific Theatres announced on Monday that it would close all of its locations, which include the ArcLight Hollywood and the historic Cinerama Dome. Not as well known is that the theater chain also owns the Cinerama technology. The three-camera filming technique was introduced in 1952 in response to the rise of television, and was virtually obsolete by the time...
Novelist Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) writes about the strange case of Sarmad Khoosat's film Zindagi Tamasha ("Circus of Life"), which has won multiple prizes at international festivals, was cleared by three Pakistani boards of censors, made the country's official entry for the Best International Film Oscar, glommed onto as a political football by people who hadn't...
"The celebrity endorsement is a three-way relationship connecting the star, the product and us, and the internet has worked to draw all of its participants closer and closer together. We’re all mingling on the same platforms, our photos pinned to the same timelines. Social media influencers have narrowed the distinction between celebrities’ claims to fame and their ability to...
Univision, the largest producer of Spanish-language in the United States, and Televisa, Mexico's largest media conglomerate (and one of the world's biggest single producers of broadcast material in any language) will combine their content operations to form Televisa-Univision, which could become the dominant media force in the entire Hispanophone world. - Variety
Neighbours, which has been running in Australia since 1985 and is one of the country's most successful TV shows internationally, has had two indigenous cast members and one of Indian descent publicly describe some brazen behavior from fellow cast and crew members, including one incident where an actor compared the Indian-Australian colleague to a bobblehead doll. - The Guardian
The truth is, the cinema experience as we know it, is likely doomed. While it isn’t going to disappear entirely, it will become a “nice to have” option for the populace, versus the “must have” it was through much of the 20th century. Look forward to much more expensive tickets and far fewer movie houses, more like what happened...
The Emmy Awards — already in a ratings tailspin in recent years as it no longer celebrates mass-appeal hits — showed how far audience levels can drop, sinking 9% to 6.1 million viewers Sept. 20. Other shows, such as the American Music Awards, the Country Music Assn. Awards and the Billboard Music Awards, hit all-time lows as well. -...
ArcLight's stable includes the prized Cinerama Dome Hollywood. The Dome, built in 1963 by Pacific Theatres' parent company the Decurion Corp., is the crown jewel of the small theater complex that was later reconstructed in the early 2000s. Throughout the decades, the Dome, in particular, has been a favorite site place to stage premieres — it timed its opening...
