“In a new report, the guild said women writers’ share of TV staff jobs was 29% in the most recent season, down from 30.5% in the previous season. Meanwhile, minorities accounted for 13.7% of employment, compared with 15.6% during the 2011-12 season.”
“The shelf-lives of A-listers are just much shorter. Basically, you find a lot more actors having that spark of an A-list spark. The ability to structure a career almost as completely and militantly as someone like Tom Cruise” — who conquered Hollywood hit by hit — “is very tough.”
“After 40 years as a weekend staple on U.S. television screens, Saturday Night Live will start a Chinese version in partnership with Sohu.com Inc., operator of an online search engine and video streaming sites.”
“[She] is one of the earliest examples of an affected and oft-debated cinematic trope … that fictional bearer of quirky fun and madcap outings and ultimate lifelong happiness once emotional walls have been dismantled, brick by brick.”
“Competition on the internet is constantly evolving and poorly understood. AOL was a has-been before the ink was dry on the relentless complaints about its unassailable monopoly; cable content is suddenly challenged by streaming video; DSL, once thought dead, now offers 25-75 Mbps service. Yet the FCC’s rules ignore this complexity, insisting on a one-dimensional conception of internet competition that’s never actually existed.”
“The cinematography is as crisp and chilling as a horror movie. Men in orange jumpsuits kneel on a beach beneath a sky of broken clouds. Executioners hover over them, dressed in black, knives aglint. … This and other recent execution videos released by Islamic State are slickly produced narratives of multiple camera angles, eerie tension and polished editing that suggest the filmmakers are versed in Hollywood aesthetics.”
“A record Lunar New Year bonanza brought in $650 million in the second-largest movie market, according to data from research firm Entgroup.”
“Until the average life-span is 150 years or something, I don’t think women in their 50s are going to be considered at all viable.”
“The new movie colony’s lax self-governance galvanized middle-American arbiters of morality into a force so disruptive and outspoken that even an assumed untouchable like Zukor feared their wrath, lest their cries for reform prompt the Federal Trade Commission to censor his often lurid but profitable movies.”
“No sooner had it been revealed that DDLJ, as it is known, was being taken off the silver screen than the protests began. According to Yash Raj Films, the production house behind the film, the sudden announcement ‘resulted in a spontaneous and an overwhelming outcry from the cinema-going audience, as well as dedicated fans of the movie, expressing their shock and disappointment.’ And so the record-breaking film was reinstated.”
“The origins of these goddamn gifted Mexican filmmakers can be traced back to 1988, with the premiere of La Hora Marcada (The Marked Hour), a Mexican television anthology series devoted to tackling experimental horror, science fiction, and urban legends from Latin America. Think of it as the Mexican answer to The Twilight Zone.”
OK, yes, now we’re all depressed about culture, but “it is welcome news for the three biggest chains — Regal Entertainment Group , AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Cinemark Holdings Inc. — which endured a string of postponed or disappointing films in 2014.”
“This is clearly a victory for everyone — not just Hollywood, but everyone who uses the Internet,” said Chris Keyser, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. “It is a critical moment in the ongoing fight for free expression and robust competition.”
“Taken with cinema, but not taken in by it, … [Godard] is also the brother from another planet, at once straightforward and cryptic, an epistemologist of cinema, wondering why the film frame became a square and why lenses are round. … What to make of the Godardian mind? You might say that, as prolific as he is, Godard suffers from the attention-deficit disorder of genius.”
“The BBC should reduce its output and the television licence fee should eventually be scrapped, a parliamentary committee has said after considering the role of the publicly funded broadcaster in the wake of a string of scandals and industry changes.”
“The Guardian read the 164-page House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee report on the future of the BBC so you don’t have to.”
“Failure is a wellspring of British comedy, but its American counterpart rewards ‘optimism [and] a refusal to see oneself in a bad light’.” Christopher Orr looks at how Game of Thrones changed from savage political parody to dramatic thriller as it crossed the Atlantic, and how The Thick of It morphed into the farce of Veep.
“I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘The twenties are pretty formative, you know?’ That’s where you really become who you’re going to be. It’s one thing to grow up and go to college, but it’s another thing to … So, I will admit my mind has drifted towards [this sequel idea].”
“The level of aggression and hostility such games produce varies considerably depending upon the skill of the individual player.”
“A lot of people assumed that by comparing himself to Turing, Moore was specifically addressing the plight of people who aren’t straight … But knowing that he’s straight, and knowing the primary controversy surrounding The Imitation Game has been about its minimization of the gay experience, makes Moore’s Oscars moment a somewhat strange one. In fact, it’s striking how much his speech is decidedly not aimed at gay people.”
“It’s sad, but most people have to finally accept that the Oscars have become, well, elitist and not in step with anything that is actually popular. No one really believes anymore that the films they chose are the ones that are going to last over time.”
It’s not just Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wins for Birdman. Alfonso Cuarón won last year for Gravity, and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won Oscars two years running for those movies. Then there’s Guillermo del Toro, Rodrigo Prieto, and others. “So who is this band of Mexican artists and how did it fight to the top of one America’s most competitive industries?”
“In the film Selma, as marchers were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, audiences saw a crowd of extras mouthing dialogue and shouts — but they were hearing loopers, who recorded the shouts and screams in postproduction.”
Hint: A lot, but not all, of the Oscars went to a film about a movie star trying to find meaning through theatre.
“Above them all, at the Oscars at least, came ‘Birdman,’ which has very little to do with the real world, but everything to do with creative egos and hermetic artistic pursuits. This year, that seemed right and preferable to the Oscar voters. It was a movie that believed in actors, and forgave everyone’s flaws, and knew how to put on a show.”
“Our entertainment industry is essential to our city’s identity and economy, and this campaign represents the next step in a strategic agenda to ensure Los Angeles remains the entertainment capital of the world.”
“The Oscars mean something because, and this of course is what sets them apart from other awards that shall go nameless, they are given by a cross section of people from different crafts who actually make movies.”
“In other words, you are not winning just for your performance. You are winning because a butterfly flapped its wings on Oscar night years earlier. And so now here we are, trapped in this uncomfortable loop.”
“Accepting the prize, Stewart shouted ‘I love you Juliette’ in French to her co-star Juliette Binoche.”
“If people are going by what they enjoyed, they’re likely to be unwittingly picking more underdogs than makes sense.”