Britain may no longer have an empire, but at least it could have this: the title of the "true" father of cinema. "Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and...
For Oscar-winner Brie Larson, who won for Room and has since played Captain Marvel in the eponymous movie and Avengers: Endgame, it's not as if she needed a new revenue stream. But her weekly chats with herself, which now have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, are a form of self-care. - The New York Times
Citizen Kane used to have a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Then things changed. "The writer, credited as Mae Tinee (a play on 'matinee') comments: 'It’s interesting. It’s different. In fact, it’s bizarre enough to become a museum piece. But its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it of distinction and general entertainment value,' adding: 'I only know...
It's normal - but an exciting kind of normal - for Sydney Freeland. When she started film school, "I remember thinking, like, ‘OK, wait. I’m Native American and I’m transgender, but I want to be a film director? That’s insane. That isn’t going to happen.’ But I wanted to see what I could do anyway." - HuffPost
Video streaming — sometimes a throwaway in the company’s earnings announcements — was this time a centerpiece. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is shifting to executive chairman this summer, noted that streaming has risen 70% compared with the same time a year ago. Prime Video, which has recently marked its 10th anniversary, served film or TV titles to...
"Here we are in 2021 and many still think they can affect change by pulling their business from the very people who helped get the statewide and national results they claim to want. Apparently the way to get people to vote the way you like is to yank them around, threatening their ability to pay their mortgage and feed...
"In a way, every filmmaker is really just playing with moving light and color on surfaces. That's the whole ball game, a filmic given. But Pixar takes it further, or perhaps just does it more self-consciously and systematically. Its emotionally weighty, computer-generated animated films deploy precisely calibrated color and light to convey narrative and emotion … But I'll tell...
"It has been a year of struggle and experimentation for the television industry, which has had to learn on the fly while trying to create new diversions for an unusually captive home audience. … Some changes could outlast the pandemic. Just as the nature of schooling and office work has been transformed as millions have learned to function remotely,...
"Today, the company is launching Play Something, a new viewing mode designed to make it easier for the indecisive among us to quickly find something to watch. … The goal of this new shuffle feature is to eliminate, or at least ease, the Peak TV-era anxiety so many of us feel while trying to find something to watch" among...
The Office and The Sopranos were two of the biggest hits of 2020, according to streaming services, which have recently paid hundreds of millions of dollars for exclusive rights to long-off-the-air favorite comedies such as Seinfeld, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and South Park. Why? The same reason people turn to comfort food: reassurance and the dopamine hit. -...
In its first-quarter earnings report Tuesday, Google parent company Alphabet said YouTube brought in revenue of $6.01 billion in advertising revenue during the quarter — up from $4 billion from a year ago, for a growth rate of 49%. That’s an acceleration over its 46% growth in Q4. It’s also nearly twice the growth rate of Netflix, which reported 24%...
Zachary Horwitz collected $690 million from investors for movie deals authorities say were fictitious. The HBO and Netflix contracts he used to convince Russell and others that his business was legitimate were forgeries, the government says. - Los Angeles Times
Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen released on Monday. Nielsen’s final numbers are expected on Tuesday and will include out-of-home viewing and some streaming statistics. - The New York Times
As a Hollywood writer friend of mine said after she watched “Nomadland”: “That was not entertainment. That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van.” Not a crop of movies that make you reach for the Junior Mints. - The New York Times
"A website called #allesdichtmachen ('close it all down') was launched on Thursday night, featuring 53 to-camera clips in which high-profile actors sarcastically boast of the lengths they have gone to restrict their social contacts and appeal to the government to lock down the country even harder." Mein Gott, did they get dragged. One television host who's been working...
