ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

MEDIA

“Train Dreams” And “Adolescence” Lead 2026 Independent Spirit Awards

Train Dreams, Clint Bentley’s feature about an isolated logger in the early-20th-century Pacific Northwest, led the film categories with three wins. In the television categories, Adolescence, a British crime drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a classmate to death, took four of the six prizes. - The Hollywood Reporter

Warner Bros. Will Let Paramount Submit Another Bid To Buy It

“Warner Bros Discovery Inc. has agreed to temporarily reopen sale negotiations with rival Hollywood studio Paramount Skydance Corp., setting the stage for a potential second bidding war with Netflix Inc.” - Bloomberg (Yahoo!)

We Need To Talk About Heathcliff, Emily Bronte, And Race

“The ‘dynamics of this novel are about otherness in various ways, and that otherness is in Heathcliff.’ Onscreen, however, Heathcliff has largely been played by white actors.” - The New York Times

Is Warner Bros Back To (Sky)Dancing With Paramount?

“Paramount Skydance’s latest offer — No. 9 since last year — includes a premium ‘ticking fee’ for WBD shareholders of about $650 million for every quarter that the Paramount-WBD nuptials are not completed by Dec. 31, 2026.” - Variety

As ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Critically Crushed But Winning The Box Office, NPR Asks What Makes A Good Adaptation

“When you read a book, you live inside it — you're intellectually and emotionally invested, because you create its world in your mind.” But a movie? You’re just visiting. - NPR

The Old Movies You Could Watch Instead Of Seeing Heated Rivalry For The Tenth Time

Not that we’re judging your trips to the cottage, but, for instance, "Tkaronto patiently and beautifully expresses that longing for connection through fleeting, thorny and bittersweet romantic interlude.” - The Guardian (UK)

If You Want More Olympics, There Are Years And Years Of Documentaries To Stream

“Some of them are startlingly cinematic, far beyond the workmanlike coverage we expect from seeing the same action on television.” - The New York Times

Catalan Cinema, Moving Beyond The Art House

“The region’s new generation of filmmakers is no longer bound by the intimate, place-specific arthouse mode that often defined the late 2010s New Catalan Cinema. ... They are pushing into genre, into international co-production, into areas their predecessors rarely touched.” - Variety

How Does The New York Times Decide Which TV Series To Recap?

Is it all about popularity? What about when a network drops every episode at once? Does a series need to have characters who might grip an audience, or a dense plot? The NYT editor in charge of recapping has Thoughts. - The New York Times

The Successor To The Corporation For Public Broadcasting

The wind-down of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has given birth to a new independent, nonprofit organization that looks to fill some of the gap left by CPB’s closure after nearly six decades. - InsideRadio

Is An Organized Ring Running Online Smear Campaigns In Hollywood?

“This clandestine smear machine seemingly connects some of the most talked-about scandals of recent years. … (Figures are) targeted by mysteriously operated websites that are filled with character-assassinating claims and impossible to take down. In recent months, the origins of these sites have been connected and allegedly unmasked in court.” - The Hollywood Reporter

BBC To Cut Hundreds Of Millions From Budget

“Staff at the BBC were told about plans to cut about a tenth of its costs over the next three years in a conference call held by director-general Tim Davie on Thursday afternoon. Operating costs for the BBC were more than £2 billion last year.” - The Irish Times

The First-Ever Afghan Romcom Is Opening The Berlin Film Festival

“Shahrbanoo Sadat … wrote, directed and stars in the daring, genre-bending film No Good Men, about a budding love affair in a Kabul newsroom on the eve of the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 and the West’s chaotic withdrawal.” - The Guardian

Why More Oscar Categories Are Open To Foreign-Language Films Then Ever Before

Yes, of course the fact that the Motion Picture Academy has made a conscious effort to internationalize its membership is part of it. Yet the key factor (yes, for all categories) has been a change in the way nominations for Best International Film are made. - The Hollywood Reporter

How Sundance’s Move To Boulder Could Reinvent The Festival

Sundance’s move to Boulder is coinciding with a fortuitous moment in the specialty film space, with an uptick in post-pandemic interest from younger moviegoers. - The Hollywood Reporter

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');