A prolonged fallow period extending through the summer has left the Beijing film industry wringing its hands, wondering whether a lasting shift in the marketplace may be underway. - The Hollywood Reporter
There are blaring red warnings signs for traditional media everywhere you look. Ratings for the broadcast and cable news channels saw steep declines in ratings from Nielsen (finals showed an average of 42.3 million people, down from nearly 57 million four years ago), with the lowest ratings in decades. - The Hollywood Reporter
In a Welsh seaside town, Geoff and Lawrence Fowler are turning out a series of surprisingly good low-budget features (e.g., Jack in the Box) about dolls, puppets or robots possessed by evil. Says one aficionado, "Their films look good, they are well-designed and well-plotted with good jump scares." - The Hollywood Reporter
Scientists analyzed ancient DNA extracted from skeletal remains and pieced together fragments of five people’s identities, rewriting the romantic stories of who they were and how they were related. - Washington Post
U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan and her top advisers at the National Archives and Records Administration, which operates a popular museum on the National Mall, have sought to de-emphasize negative parts of U.S. history. She has ordered the removal of prominent references to such landmark events as the government’s displacement of indigenous tribes. The Wall Street Journal
Today, we are rapidly becoming ‘tech-vexed’ – my word for the gradual yet relentless seduction of computerised life. The COVID-19 pandemic simply accelerated a trend: many of us are now more intimately connected to smartphones than to nonmediated relationships with people. - Aeon
"Streaming platform Mubi has cancelled its long-planned Mubi Fest Istanbul at the eleventh hour after (the local district) governor banned a screening of Luca Guadagnino’s LGBTI+ themed movie Queer, which was to have been the opening film." - Deadline
"With the approval of Proposition A, voters in El Paso have formally revoked the city’s authority to issue the remaining $128.5 million in bonds that had been allocated for a multipurpose performing arts and entertainment facility in Downtown El Paso." - El Paso Matters
How could anyone tell this after all this time? The answer, say Egyptologists at the University of York, has been right in front of us. It's all about the ears. - Artnet
Martyna Majok, who won the Pulitzer for drama in 2018 with her play Cost of Living, will write the script. The project is in early development, and no director or marquee actor has yet been publicly attached to the project. - The Hollywood Reporter
Since the presidential election results became clear early Wednesday morning, Margaret Atwood's novel has been high on Amazon's list of top-selling books, as are Orwell’s 1984 and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. All three were popular during Trump's first term. - AP
"The city drained the fountain to clean it ahead of the Vatican’s Jubilee Year. ... Visitor access to the site is currently via a temporary walkway. But the real problem is the plywood-sided pool on the stairs in front of the fountain into which visitors are now instructed to toss coins." - Artnet
Funds would be raised by selling tickets to the performances of the winning entries, with the theatre’s president Suranne Jones giving an on-stage critique afterwards. "It will combine a search for community talent with being a money-maker," she said. - BBC
The author of the beloved young adult novel is writing her own libretto, with music by composer Derek Bermel. The work just had its first performance, unstaged, at the University of Michigan; the fully staged world premiere is next July at Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York. - Chicago Tribune
