"As a movie star, George Clooney is a happy warrior, always ready with a thoughtful quote or charming anecdote, and he’s the rare celebrity whose political acumen matches his outspokenness." But his directorial career is "bereft of personality and devoid of substance." - Slate
"The Cinerama Dome first opened in 1963. The venue survived a demolition scare in 1998, when a proposal by Pacific Theatres would have stripped the dome and replaced it with restaurants and a movie multiplex" - and now, too, the pandemic. - Los Angeles Times
Studio executives and box-office pundits expected audiences to show up for In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story, and not just fans of the movie musical but general audiences, as well. After a year without movies, audiences would crave the spectacle. It didn’t happen. - The Guardian
This fall FCC offered a rare opportunity to apply for new non-commercial signals. Public radio networks in New England, the South, and especially the Intermountain West plan to use the new frequencies to expand coverage in rural areas they haven't yet reached. - Current
Platforms like Google and Facebook have transformed the way we consume and share news, but the digital revolution hasn’t yet revealed an equivalent breakthrough in the way the media makes money. This is a paradoxical reality at a time of unprecedented innovation. - The Walrus
While digital transformation was creating abundance in the scarce resources that had previously defined market power, it was also creating a new scarce resource, and therefore a new source of competitive advantage: customer attention. - Harvard Business Review
"In this milieu, a Cold War culture dedicated to conformity and shot through with Freudian panic about emasculation, audiences could glimpse Anybodys, a character who refuses to conform, refuses the ironclad terms of gender, in bold ways." So Tony Kushner and Stephen Sondheim went for it. - Slate
Today, the media industry has consolidated under fewer owners than ever before; its labour conditions have grown dire. The undeniable expertise of many journalists isn’t enough to restore public credibility in the press. The political problem will require a political, not merely a technical, fix. - Psyche
" new social media personalities … paint cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China — and also hit back at criticisms of Beijing's authoritarian governance, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus." - The New York Times
There were no press releases sent en masse with statements thanking the HFPA and saluting co-stars and filmmakers. Also absent were the emotional reaction calls between journalists and nominees, still recovering from their shock at the big news. - Variety
Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers starts out with a very Almodóvar situation, two single women about to give birth, but the movie’s really about the ongoing fallout from the many extrajudicial murders committed by Franco's regime, a topic most Spaniards have spent decades avoiding. - The New York Times Magazine
He'd made some comedy-horror mashups and one arthouse hit when he set to work on the Tolkien adaptations, so he wasn't someone you'd think of giving nine-figure budgets to. The bet paid off, of course: the films took in $3 billion. Here's how they came together. - Variety
For several years, a mixture of denial and deep optimism have kept up the facade. News outlet leaders believe that, since others are perceived to have success with podcasting, their payoff must be right around the corner. - NiemanLab
Early that morning, when she tried to log in to Instagram, she found that the account had been disabled. A message on the screen read: “Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else.” - The New York Times
In the film categories, Belfast and The Power of the Dog got seven nominations each; on the television side, Succession received five nods, with four each for Ted Lasso and The Morning Show. - CNN
