Media

When the director’s latest film, An Officer and a Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair), was nominated for 12 César awards, many people in France and beyond were outraged and threatened a boycott, and the entire board of the César Academy later resigned. While Polanski hasn’t pulled his movie from consideration (the awards ceremony is tomorrow night), he says bitterly that “we know how this evening will unfold already” and he will not attend. – Yahoo! (AFP)

The maestra will be 64 when she steps down at the end of August 2021 after a 14-year tenure. While she has reportedly been quietly frustrated by the orchestra’s recent struggles, she will remain involved with OrchKids, the music education program for poor Baltimore students that she founded, and will conduct three programs in each of the next five seasons. – The Baltimore Sun

From virtual backgrounds to hide the dirty dished in your sink to AI-powered smoothing of video over iffy connections, video-conferencing services are trying to make the experience more vivid and reliable. – Wired

Knives Out and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has said that Apple won’t let the bad guys in movies use iPhones. “Apple… they let you use iPhones in movies but — and this is very pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie — bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.” – The Verge

“Structural problems, such as Hollywood’s persistent lack of women in positions of power and key creative roles, will take years to adequately address. Still, on top of the specific changes to industry practices, advocates say there’s a strong sense that the underlying standards of behavior toward women in the industry have changed in significant ways.” Here are five ways in which progress has been real. – Los Angeles Times

“Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore. … The character of Apu was done with love and pride and the best of intentions. My message is, things can be done with really good intentions and have negative consequences.” – The New York Times

“It is a truth universally acknowledged in world cinema that a celebrated auteur, making their first film outside their native tongue, must be preparing a dud.” But is it actually true? Well, there are a few success stories such as Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth and Alps in Greek, then The Lobster and Oscar-winner The Favourite in English), but only a few. – The Guardian

Sure, sure, Hollywood has tried it before – but, along with Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog is reaping big bucks. That means “video game movies are really having a moment.” – Sydney Morning Herald

A mystery voting system, a government that has passed laws harming people in the city where the awards are held, and a ton of wins for only one film – that’s just the beginning of the issues for India’s Filmfare Awards. – The Juggernaut

The good: Leadership. “Its festival directorships were shared equally between men and women, and … its executive board was similarly balanced.”
The less good: Director numbers. “The majority of films shown at the competition were still made by male directors. At this year’s festival, 37.9% of films were directed by women, and six of the 18 films in competition were directed by women, which is down from seven last year.” – The Guardian (UK)

This is the weirdest possible sentence to write, but director Céline Sciamma says that Portrait of a Lady on Fire isn’t considered erotic in, of all places, France. What? WHAT? Quoi?? Sciamma: “It’s a very bourgeois industry. There’s resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. ‘A film can be feminist?’ They don’t know this concept. They don’t read the book. They don’t even know about the fact that ‘male gaze’ exists. You can tell it’s a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy.” – The Guardian (UK)

Vine was introduced in 2012, bought by Twitter, and killed in 2016. But in its time, it “turned everyday people into stars on other platforms and beyond. Its musical whims warped the music industry. It cultivated memes that might have been dismissed as inside jokes if not for their tendency to flourish outside the app.” Can the app make a comeback in 2020, where TikTok rules the internet? – The New York Times

How did we get here, with most U.S. audiences only seeing subtitles on non-English-language films and many other countries using excellent voice actors and technology for dubbing, and where are we going? (In other words, are the one-inch subtitle barricades about to fall?) – BBC

“At its core, gentrification is about what it means to belong. And few places in Los Angeles are more hotly contested in those terms than Boyle Heights,” the Los Angeles neighborhood where the bilingual Netflix series Gentefied is set. – The New York Times

Until just a few years ago, the very few times queer characters were shown at all in Bollywood movies were as figures of mockery. Now, very occasionally, a film with a sympathetic portrayal of same-sex couples or trans characters does come out of the big Mumbai studios. And more progress can be seen in India’s “regional” (non-Hindi-language) cinema. – BBC

“This is not a fight the BBC is picking nor a contest my party promised if we got elected. If the BBC ends up in decline, it will be the government which will be accused by the very people we will rely on for support at the next election.” – BBC

The 38 Degrees petition is a response to a report on the front page of Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper The Sunday Times, in which sources close to prime minister Boris Johnson set out a blueprint for how the BBC should be dismantled when its current charter expires in 2027. – Deadline

How’s this for a near monopoly? Cineplex owns 75 percent of movie screens across Canada – and indie theatres say the behemoth is shutting them out of Oscar winners and nominees like Parasite and Little Women. “Industry insiders say the practice of exclusive runs at certain cinemas isn’t new. But independent theatres say that exclusivity has become excessive and keeps them from showing award-winning movies for longer than ever.” One wrote a petition saying this practice is “crushing indie theatres across Canada.” – CBC

One MP called the idea an “act of cultural vandalism,” and another wrote, “”his is not a fight the BBC is picking nor a contest my party promised if we got elected. … If the BBC ends up in decline, it will be the government which will be accused by the very people we will rely on for support at the next election.” But Johnson is determined to pick the fight. – BBC

The semi-basement that the Kim family lives in is a reality for about 2 percent of South Koreans living in Seoul – one of the most expensive cities in Asia. One of them, who shares a name with the daughter in the film, says it’s very similar. “Kim, who moved into her $211-a-month banjiha apartment after leaving her job to take care of her mother, is no fan of her current accommodations, which flood during the rainy season.” – The Washington Post (AP)

Well, debate over, at least for films with subtitles: “The twisted South Korean thriller collected $5.5 million over the weekend, an exceptional 234% increase in ticket sales and the biggest post-Oscar boost for a best picture winner in the past decade.” (And that’s not including the massive overseas bump as well.) – Variety

Will Parasite‘s best picture win goose more international fare from the big studios – as opposed simply to Netflix – or will it only help both Bong Joon-ho and then other films that seem, in Hollywood terms, similar to Parasite? The biggest winner might be the Academy. “A vote for Parasite served as more than just a cast ballot: It was an investment in the Oscars’ future as a relevant institution.” – The New York Times