Media

The latest in a long line of cinema that makes critics and others walk out in the middle of a film? The Painted Bird, a new adaptation of the Jerzy Kozinski novel. “Cinema seats don’t tend to flip back anymore, but it sounds as if the drama within the auditorium was impressive enough without those percussive thuds.” – The Irish Times

Er, what were you doing, British Pathé? “At the height of the Blitz, the British government made the bold decision to communicate Nazi air raid safety tips to the population the only way they knew how: the art of ventriloquism.” – Slate

Bryce Dallas Howard is a little fed up with watching actresses constantly being asked about parenting, and actors never getting asked. “It’s dangerous, because the assumption is a father doesn’t need to balance it because someone else is.” – Los Angeles Times

“Time and again, the money extracted from the tech giants amounts to a pittance. The structural remedies that accompany those fines—the part where companies agree to change the offending parts of their behavior—can arguably have greater effect. But blaming the FTC for inadequately bringing Silicon Valley to heel on its own is like blaming a fork for not holding soup. Could it do more? Should it? Just don’t expect real privacy change without strong privacy laws in place.” – Wired

Many people today take television seriously. Instead, Nussbaum’s contribution has been to argue for what precisely about television merits our serious attention. – Los Angeles Review of Books

“According to the 22nd annual Boxed In report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film …, female characters comprised 45% of all speaking characters across comedies, dramas, and reality shows on broadcast, cable, and streaming. That is up from 40% in 2017-2018. … Off-screen, 31% of all creators, directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and directors of photography in television were women, beating the previous high of 28% set in 2016-2017.” – Variety

“Co-writer Peter Chiarelli, as an experienced feature scribe who broke out with 2009’s The Proposal, was to be paid a significantly higher fee than [Adele] Lim, a veteran TV writer who never had penned a feature until [director John M.] Chu hired her to work on the screenplay.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Women who speak publicly and challenge authority have long been dismissed as “shrill” or “grating.” What’s less widely understood is how the design of the technology that transmits human voices has shaped this gendered invective since the dawn of the broadcast era: everything from microphones to modes of transmission have been optimized for lower voices. – The New Yorker

As noted cinéaste John Waters put it, “Oh no! Where will old art movie fans go to see rarefied foreign films in the safety of a rich neighborhood?” And Film at Lincoln Center program director Dennis Lim said, “All these people lamenting the loss of the Paris, I would be curious about the last time they set foot there.” – The New York Times

Richard Linklater’s new long-term project is a silm adaptation of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which traces, in reverse, the gradual, bitter estrangement of three longtime friends. Starring are Blake Jenner, Ben Platt, and Beanie Feldstein, the latter two themselves close friends since high school. – Los Angeles Times

“I’ve heard Blockbuster called “the Walmart of video stores,” which illustrates not only their sales strategy, but their history as an industry Goliath. Like the chain of retail megastores, Blockbuster achieved domination by muscling into new markets and putting locally owned mom-and-pop shops out of business with its deep pockets and seemingly limitless resources.” – New York Magazine

A new video titled Dirtiest Porn Ever shows us the basic sex on a beach — except that this beach is absolutely covered with plastic trash, which workers in Pornhub-branded protective suits pick up as the performers do their thing. Why Pornhub? Well, can you think of another site that has broader reach to raise awareness? (And with each view of the video, Pornhub will donate to a ship cleaning up an ocean garbage patch.) – Dezeen

Jenna Wortham writes about a set of recent films that “points a finger directly at the greed of empire, and at the deliberate and elaborate social construction of whiteness to oppress, to ravage, to raze, to devastate, to occupy and to conquer.” – The New York Times

Content, a seven-episode series produced by the other ABC (that’s the Australian Broadcasting Corp.), “is a comedy about a narcissistic millennial determined to become an online influencer, no matter what it takes … The high concept is that it unfolds in real time, entirely from the perspective of the protagonist’s smartphone.” – The Guardian

“An elite team of film archivists here is working to conserve [reels of film] as part of a years-long government program that aims to digitize about a century’s worth of Afghan documentaries and films over the next six months.” – The Washington Post

The Wizard of Oz‘s Glinda the Good Witch of the North was the first sorceress figure not to wear black, cackle, have a cartoonishly ugly face, or do evil — and so became the grandmother of Samantha Stevens (Bewitched), Sabrina, and Hermione Granger. Writer Pam Grossman makes the case that Glinda was much more than a “silly pain in the neck” (as Salman Rushdie had it) — and locates Glinda’s likely origin in L. Frank Baum’s mother-in-law. – The Atlantic

KSUT in Ignacio, Colorado was given the Folk N’ Bluegrass festival, which brings in about 2,000 attendees per day and the Four Corners Folk Festival, which draws nearly double that. – Current

“Netflix may have been the first to crack the key European market, with locally produced hit Money Heist, but the streamer is now facing heated competition from the likes of Amazon, HBO, Viacom and local player Movistar, which are all vying for Spanish talent and content.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Ramping up the drive into censorship in Brazil, its Minister of Citizenship, Omar Terra, has suspended a call for applications for governmental TV funding … Terra’s announcement comes just days after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lashed out at funding for LGBTQI series in an outburst during a scheduled state of the union-style address.” – Variety

This year more than ever, we are seeing a transatlantic schism between film festivals over how to handle these acclaimed directors, each of whom have very different backstories. – Deadline

Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker, is over the “false hierarchy” of TV shows, especially when they center men behaving badly. “It’s not about creating a new hierarchy. It’s about exploding the false status anxiety and, to a certain extent, the gender bias that’s basically kept all of those [female-centered] shows categorized as ‘optional’ shows that girls and teenagers watch. It’s like: topple the top 10 list, the anxious hierarchy. Look across the universe at different kinds of creativity.” – The Millions

Not to mention the demands on the set dresser. No, really, this is how Succession works: “They decided it would be impractical to haul equipment and a crew to shoot in a hunting lodge near [Lake Placid], reversed course, and settled on shooting in the Otto Kahn mansion, nicknamed Oheka Castle, in Long Island. Carter drove out to take a look at Oheka in the dead of winter, and inspiration struck: ‘We’re like, This feels like Hungary, why don’t we pitch that it’s in Hungary?‘” – Vulture

López, a Mexican director and writer, defied convention and expectations to create a new horror film that addresses the real-life horrors of drug cartels (with a side dose of fantasy along with the horror). Why unexpected? Well: “Penning rom-coms for sale, or ‘wrong-coms’ as López humorously dubs them, gained her access to the big screen just as major U.S. studios started producing movies in Mexico.” – Los Angeles Times

School newspapers usually aren’t independent from the schools they’re trying to cover. And that’s a big, big problem. “When professional pundits talk about dangers to free expression on campus, they typically refer to a handful of incidents in which colleges have revoked invitations for controversial speakers. This, however, is a fringe issue, confined to a small number of universities. The real crisis of campus speech lies elsewhere—in the erosion of student newspapers.” – The Atlantic

There’s a brand of young straight men who are “relying on the gifts of biology to flesh out a personality. It works for a while, because viewers like to be complimented and to watch an attractive, familiar talking head give them a pixelated smile on a lonely day.” But to be truly successful – i.e. to make money as an influencer – the young dudes need a lot more. That’s where agents come in. – Hyperallergic

Yes. It’s weird, and it’s true: He’s a “mentor” of some sort in a new Star Wars TV show. Luckily, the show looks super-grim. Still: What? – Vulture