Five years after the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag triggered controversy, the group behind the awards has made inclusion a requirement to be considered to win them. In what represents the most direct link between the movie industry’s top prize and efforts to promote diversity and address systemic issues, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday…
Category: Art
Tenet, first Hollywood post-COVID-19 release in US, takes $20m
Warner Bros hopes Christopher Nolan thriller will lure people back to cinemas as the country marks Labor Day weekend. Tenet, the first major Hollywood release in six months since the coronavirus pandemic delayed shoots and closed cinemas, has grossed $20.2m in its opening five days in the United States. Such box office takings for an…
Trump, on huge White House stage, decrying Biden, radicals
Facing a moment fraught with national crises, President Donald Trump accepted his party’s renomination on a massive White House South Lawn stage Thursday night, breaking with tradition by using the executive mansion as a political backdrop and defying pandemic guidelines to address a tightly packed, largely maskless crowd. As troubles churned outside the gates, Trump…
REDSTONE DEAD AT 97…
He bested business rivals throughout his long career as he engineered deals for Viacom, Paramount and CBS and displayed an unwavering passion to win. Sumner Redstone, the hard-charging mogul who parlayed his father’s New England drive-in theater business into a media empire that now flows into virtually every avenue of entertainment, has died. He was…
Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture”
Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the contributors to the Harper’s letter, discusses what the document aimed to accomplish and whether cancel culture has always existed.Source: Harper’s MagazineOn July 7th, Harper’s Magazine published what it called “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which quickly became part of the conversation around the subject of “cancel culture.” The letter, which has…
Is the age of the celebrity over?
From the ‘Imagine’ video onwards, the famous have been treated with ridicule and anger during these fraught times – but is this really the end of a love affair, asks Rachael Sigee. Just as the history books will consider the time before and after Covid-19, scholars of pop culture will likely divide their studies into…
Ennio Morricone dead at 91
Ennio Morricone, the Oscar-winning Italian composer who created the coyote-howl theme for the iconic Spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and often haunting soundtracks for such classic Hollywood gangster movies as “The Untouchables” and the epic “Once Upon A Time In America,” died Monday. He was 91. Morricone’s longtime lawyer, Giorgio Assumma,…
SHOWBIZ IN SHOCK…
Hollywood’s Great Depression: Meet the Entertainment Workers Left Jobless by the Coronavirus Pandemic Mac Brandt was one of the lucky ones. For the past six years, he’s made a living purely from acting, appearing in television shows like “Kingdom” and “Arrested Development,” and scrounging up enough jobs to pay the bills without having to tend bar…
Netflix to slow down streaming so the internet doesn’t break
UPDATED: In what could be a harbinger of things to come in the United States, Netflix is tapping the breaks on its download speeds in Europe in order to reduce network bandwidth now that millions of people have committed to staying home. The move is in response to European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who spoke with Netflix CEO…
Bob Iger to step down as Disney CEO, effective immediately
Disney announced Tuesday that CEO Bob Iger will step down from the role and become executive chairman through 2021, effective immediately. Bob Chapek, who most recently served as chairman of Disney parks, experiences and products, will assume the role of CEO. Iger plans to focus on Disney’s creative strategy through the remainder of his tenure….