"The hundreds of movie stars and filmmakers who normally swarm TIFF were kept out of Toronto by the closure of the Canada-U.S. border to all but essential crossings and by strict quarantine rules for visitors. TIFF compensated by enlisting celebrities as festival ambassadors to engage in virtual versions of Q&A sessions. Numbers are not available yet for how many tickets were sold. Bailey and Vicente said they’re delighted with public response to TIFF 2020’s new venues, especially the West Island Open Air Cinema at Ontario Place, where moviegoers snapped up tickets to sit in Muskoka chairs in socially distanced circles. 'People loved that,' Bailey says. The fest also had to cope, just before opening day, regarding its plan to let people take their masks off inside TIFF Bell Lightbox screenings, so they could consume snacks. Masks were deemed mandatory throughout screenings, robbing TIFF of a chance to recoup some of its financial losses through concession sales."

The Star | September 20, 2020

“We’re going to be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youth... Do me a favor, could you put up $5 billion into a fund for education, so we can educate people as to real history of our country -- the real history, not the fake history?"
Oracle And Walmart Appear Ready To Split TikTok Proceeds After Acceding To Trump Demand For $5 Billion Toward Trump's "1776 Committee," Fashioned From Spite Over The 1619 Project; Money Will Be Spent To Alter Teaching Of American History And Indoctrinate Students In Trump Image

September 19, 2020

"Provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses."

Variety | September 19, 2020

Edgar Wright: "'Diana Rigg will meet you at Berners Tavern.” Just seeing those words written in a text gave me an anxious thrill. Despite her illustrious work on stage and screen (big and small), the blushing adolescent in me was still nervously excited to meet Emma Peel. When I walked into the restaurant I was dead on time. But she was fifteen minutes early, already at the table and looking fabulous in leopard print and gold bangles. After I stumbled through my hello, she offered, “I’m having a Campari and soda, darling, will you have one?” That was the first time, aged 45, I’d ever had a Campari and soda. And what a great way to start."

"It has been compared to western war movies such as Dunkirk (although there is more than a touch of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor in there), and so far it has taken more than $400 million at the box office, making it the second-highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide. The Eight Hundred draws attention to the meteoric progress of China’s increasingly blockbuster-oriented film industry, but also to the Chinese government’s determination to stamp its authority on it. The two might be on a collision course."

Winston Groom, 77, Survived By A Box Of Choc'lates

The Guardian | September 19, 2020

KCRW Projects 30% Hole Blown In Operating Budget; Four Positions Eliminated As Twenty-Four Employees Take Buyouts

LA Times | September 19, 2020

“When we got the news that we were back to [gathering] restrictions, we thought, okay, we can’t fight this, but we’re Vikings so we will pull up our sleeves and make the best of it!” said Reykjavík International Film Festival team member María Ólafsdóttir, smiling. The group decided not to frame the changes to their formatting as “Due to COVID.” “No, we said, okay, this time we are online. We were very positive about it. Not COVID-positive, of course. Just positive. The organisers saw this as an opportunity to spread their reach in Iceland and offer international film to those outside of Reykjavík. “We can bring films to people in old folks homes, people at sea and those who are maybe too worried to go out right now. We will still have some in-person screenings according to the current rules at Bíó Paradís and the Nordic House, but having it online means everyone can still have entertainment.”

September 19, 2020

Industry Calls for Immediate Release of Sudanese Filmmaker Hajooj Kuka

Variety | September 19, 2020

Steven Zeitchik: "'There is a lot of denial going on among studio executives,' said Megan Colligan, president of Imax Entertainment, and former executive at Paramount and Fox Searchlight. 'People are rushing to make these big-budget movies but not giving much thought to the fact there won’t be any place to put them.' A growing number of voices like Colligan are instead urging a larger rethink, one that goes beyond postponing films a few months and instead recalibrates production and distribution for a time when theatrical tickets are a much smaller piece of the pie. While there are no easy solutions in the age of COVID-19, they say that new approaches in making and releasing films are a necessity."

September 19, 2020

Steven Zeitchik: "It's hard to wrap one's mind around the first black superhero and the quintessential feminist superhero dying in successive months. Even setting aside her vast legal legacy, RBG is a groundbreaker because of what she demonstrated culturally: you can be a super-serious icon without ever taking yourself super-seriously."

Twitter | September 19, 2020

RIP RBG, 87

September 18, 2020

Queen Strips Harvey Weinstein of Royal Honor

The Guardian | September 18, 2020

Trump Fiat TikTok Download Ban Takes Effect Sunday

September 18, 2020

“TikTok deal still has a chance but WeChat ‘dead’ in the U.S.; senior administration official”

CNBC | September 18, 2020

"A filmed performance of Heidi Schreck's acclaimed Broadway show 'What The Constitution Means To Me,' directed by Mareielle Hller, debutS on Amazon Prime on October 16"

September 17, 2020

Paradigm Passes On 180 Employees

“We had no choice but to reinvent this year,” says New York Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez. “It’s a 58-year-old festival, but it also feels like the first.”

Anthony D'Alessandro: "“This isn’t as simple as Tenet at the box office. It’s a much bigger psychological issue. There’s a lot of mixed stimuli that it’s safe and not safe right now, and that’s throughout all industries. It’s about conditioned behavior, and for six months we’ve been told you can be hurt if you’re inside a venue, away from home.”

Deadline | September 17, 2020

"After publicly renouncing Black Nationalism in 1979, Stanley Crouch strove to place himself in the tradition of Ralph Ellison and, especially, Albert Murray, thinkers through which the idea of embracing Blackness and embracing American-ness became one and the same. Crouch felt he was extending Ellison's and Murray's work when attacking important artists, such as Spike Lee and Toni Morrison, for "doing the race thing." At the same time, Crouch fought for what he considered a Black aesthetic in jazz, and his 2003 Jazz Times essay "Putting the White Man in Charge" pairs neatly with Amiri Baraka's famous 1960 polemic, "Jazz and the White Critic." His outsized opinions were rendered in scalding, pugilistic prose – he even acquired a reputation for being willing to literally fight someone for disagreeing with him. Unsurprisingly, Crouch became one of the most controversial commentators around, the sort of critic everyone had an opinion about, even if they had never seriously engaged with his work."

September 17, 2020

"Stanley Crouch found ready adversaries among fellow Black Americans, whom he criticized as defining themselves in racial terms and as reducing the broader Black experience to one of victimization. He vilified gangsta rap as “Birth of a Nation with a backbeat,” the Rev. Al Sharpton as a “buffoon,” the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “insane,” the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison “as American as P.T. Barnum” and Alex Haley, the author of “Roots,” as “opportunistic.” By contrast, he venerated his intellectual mentors James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, who, by his lights, saw beyond the conventions of race and ideology while viewing the contributions of Black people as integral to the American experience."

The New York Times | September 17, 2020

Towns Demand Cut Of Income From Netflix, Hulu, Streamers

Hollywood Reporter | September 17, 2020

"To celebrate the 4K release of Full Metal Jacket, Matthew Modine is making his award-winning iPad app free for a limited time"

Twitter | September 17, 2020

Maïmouna Doucouré: “We, as adults, have not given children the tools to grow up healthy in our society. I wanted to open people's eyes to what's truly happening in schools and on social media, forcing them to confront images of young girls made up, dressed up and dancing suggestively to imitate their favorite pop icon. I wanted adults to spend 96 minutes seeing the world through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl, as she lives 24 hours a day. These scenes can be hard to watch but are no less true as a result. Like most 11- and 12-year-olds, our actors in the film had already seen these types of dances and more. Despite this, during filming we were extremely mindful of their age. A trained counselor was present on set. There was no nudity except for a one-second shot in which the main characters see the exposed breast of an actress over 18 while watching a video of a dance routine on a grainy mobile screen. The project was even approved by the French government's child protection authorities.”

September 17, 2020