Media

“It’s 2047, 100 years after India’s independence, and in the fictional nation of Aryavarta, water is scarce. The republic’s authoritarian rulers are seizing children of mixed parentage from their families, interning the mothers, and forcibly reprogramming them to serve the nation and to purify their defiled minds. … While it has drawn parallels with The Handmaid’s Tale thanks to its depiction of a draconian, patriarchal state suppressing women and restricting their reproductive rights, Leila‘s central themes also include climate change and a deeply hierarchical society organised according to religion, caste and wealth.” – BBC

“Few men in America are as popular among American men as Joe Rogan. It’s a massive group congregating in plain sight, and it’s made up of people you know from high school, guys who work three cubicles down, who are still paying off student loans, who forward jealous-girlfriend memes, who spot you at the gym. … So many people in the content business right now are trying, and failing, to get the attention of these men, and yet somehow Joe Rogan has managed to recruit a following the size of Florida.” Devin Gordon does a deep dive into Rogan’s gut appeal, what’s powerful about it, and what’s unsettling. – The Atlantic

“No one set out to turn the airwaves into a political weapon — much less deputize talk-radio hosts as the ideological enforcers of a major American political party. Instead the story of how the GOP establishment lost its power over the Republican message — and eventually the party itself — begins with frantic AM radio executives and a former Top 40 disc jockey.” (That would be Rush Limbaugh.) – The Atlantic

Amanda Hess: “As its gurus lead the men (and occasionally, women) in dabbing on eye cream, selecting West Elm furniture, preparing squid-ink risotto and acquiring gym memberships, they are building the metaphorical framework for an internal transformation. Their salves penetrate the skin barrier to soothe loneliness, anxiety, depression, grief, low self-esteem, absentee parenting and hoarding tendencies. The makeover is styled as an almost spiritual conversion. It’s the meaning of life as divined through upgraded consumer choices.” – The New York Times

Since the advent of sound, movies treated jazz as a marker of modernity and youth, a soundtrack to a fledgling America further distancing itself from Europe and charting a path through its second century. – Los Angeles Review of Books

Until April (when she left amid worries about “corporate sabotage”), Chase Robinson was “vice president of production and finance’ at De Niro’s Canal Productions, drawing a $300,000 salary. Canal’s suit accuses Robinson of embezzling cash, using corporate credit cards for lavish spending on hotels and meals, taking personal trips using De Niro’s frequent flyer miles — and, on top of it all, rarely coming to work and spending what time she was in the office binge-watching Netflix. – Variety

So why aren’t there more realistic, or semi-realistic, or, dare it be suggested, hopeful films about climate change? Because, several directors said, it is hard to find financing for movies that risk being real downers and challenge audiences to change their ways. Because mass extinction is soul-crushing and people seek out entertainment to escape. – The New York Times

Sciorra has said that Weinstein attacked her in 1993, which is outside of the statute of limitations – but the prosecutors want her to be able to tell the jury her story anyway. “Prosecutors hope that Ms. Sciorra’s testimony will strengthen the case, particularly the predatory sexual assault counts, by establishing a pattern of behavior.” – The New York Times

The company is part of Killing Eve, the movie Book Club, and around 100 other media properties, to date. Their spin: “In a world of media consolidation at an unprecedented scale, the size and scale and reach of media companies today is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and the idea of ownership and creative freedom is under threat. … So how do we help create an alternative and help create leverage for people?” (The Writers Guild of America isn’t signing onto that, of course.) – Los Angeles Times

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was fined $350,000 by the FCC for a sketch about the presidential alert system. – New York Magazine

El Corazón Nunca Se Equivoca (“The Heart Is Never Wrong”), produced and set in Mexico City, is a spinoff of the popular Mi Marido Tiene Más Familia (“My Husband Has More Family”): two young men in that series have fallen in love and go off to university together — with the full support of one of their families. And with the power of telenovelas in Mexico’s machismo-filled culture, the new series is a major development. – The Washington Post

Goli Sheikholeslami, who since 2014 has led a major turnaround as Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ), will take the helm at New York Public Radio (which includes WNYC, classical station WQXR, NJ Public Radio, and WNYC Studios, a major podcast producer) in October. She succeeds Laura Walker, who presided over extraordinary growth over more than two decades but came under pressure after a series of accusations and scandals involving longtime radio hosts. – The New York Times

In an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, CEO Bob Bakish cited ViacomCBS’s content library, which includes 140,000 TV episodes, 36,000 films and 750 series, as enough ammo to fight the likes of Netflix, Disney, Comcast and others entering the TV streaming wars. – CNBC

“[Science fiction] isn’t a new genre in Indian cinema, but it has nothing like the profile it has in the West. … While Hollywood has a long tradition of making more naturalistic films about space travel – from 2001: A Space Odyssey, to Gravity and First Man – it’s only now, with the enormous strides in India’s own space exploration, that such films are beginning to resonate with the public.” – The Guardian

Francis Ford Coppola: “No one wants to make a pro-war film, everyone wants to make an anti-war film. But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be … something filled with love and peace and tranquility and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war.” – The Guardian

Netflix prides itself on a digital-first strategy, but insiders say the multimillion-dollar deal for the streamer to buy the brick-and-mortar Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood is nearly complete, just in time to potentially showcase its films during awards season. – The Hollywood Reporter

The company’s decision to give creators less room to prove their show can be a hit has a lot to do with how Netflix earns money. – The Verge

Netflix has been evolving its public policy strategies in recent months to align itself more with Hollywood and less with Silicon Valley, a shift driven by the streamer’s maturation into a full-fledged film and TV studio, by its international expansion and by the intense scrutiny Washington is now applying to the tech companies. – The Hollywood Reporter

After a half-decade of near unchecked dominance in the premium streaming video space that allowed it to aggressively poach entertainment’s top executives and A-list creative talent, the company now finds itself under attack. – The Hollywood Reporter

“At college, we were assigned Barthes’s S/Z , which made me understand what I could do in radio. … In S/Z, Barthes takes apart a short story by Balzac, line by line. He asks: How does this story pull you in, engage, and give you pleasure? He … explains: here’s how to structure a narrative by creating a sequence of events that will create forward motion that will create narrative suspense, planting questions along the way that can be answered. That turned out to be an enormously useful way to think about how to do an interview.” – The New York Review of Books

“Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, who is supervising the show’s development, told German fansite Deutsche Tolkien that the estate has refused to allow the series to be set during any period other than the Second Age of Middle-earth. This means Amazon’s adaptation will not cross over at all with events from the Third Age, which were dramatised in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy and sees hobbit Frodo Baggins destroy the One Ring.” – The Guardian