Plans for Disney’s metaverse strategy remained sketchy a year after the division was created, although the company had hinted that the new technology might have applications in fantasy sports, theme-park attractions and other consumer experiences.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-eliminates-its-metaverse-division-as-part-of-companys-layoffs-plan-94b03650?st=zjf2xhx97s52p1e
Category Archives: cinema
Are Thailand’s gay TV dramas the next K-pop?
Thai soap operas about gay romance, generically known as “Boys’ Love” (bl) or sometimes “Y series”, are stealing hearts across Asia. Though the first shows appeared in 2014, the genre, including over a hundred series to date, took off outside Thailand during covid-19 lockdowns, thanks in part to many being available on YouTube. In Japan, a key market, the hashtag Thai numa or “Thai swamp”—a reference to the shows’ addictiveness—is popular on social media. Thailand promotes bl content at international trade shows. In June 2021 the industry secured 360m baht ($10.4m) in foreign investment.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/03/09/are-thailands-gay-tv-dramas-the-next-k-pop
Hollywood has framed getting back to theaters as a content problem. But what we need most is to rethink the design of movie theaters altogether.
Movie theaters are not just giant concrete boxes—a Petco with a projector— but powerful social contracts. Where else do people (generally) agree to put away their phones and (generally) sit in silence for a couple hours other than, perhaps, church?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90809254/wakanda-forever-cannot-save-movie-theaters-but-this-plan-might
Down with the rich! Class rage fuels new wave of ‘us v them’ films and plays
In the wake of Parasite, the bloody South Korean Oscar-winner, and of the Emmy successes last week for the television dramas Squid Game and White Lotus, which is set in a luxury resort, there is a clear global appetite for exposing and satirising the huge gaps in wealth and status. Both series focused on the desperation of the serving classes.
The ill-fated yacht in Triangle of Sadness is laden with people who represent the moneyed private jet-owners of the modern world. Among them are a grizzled Russian oligarch, who sails alongside both his wife and his mistress, and an elderly British arms manufacturer and his wife. The reluctant captain of the ship is Woody Harrelson, ultimately the accidental agent of destruction in Ruben Östlund’s film. The Swedish director, who is best known for his alpine drama Force Majeure and artworld satire The Square, ultimately hands power over to one of the yacht’s cleaners, Abigail, played by Dolly De Leon, in a storyline that echoes a long history of cautionary tales in which the downtrodden rise up to wreak revenge on their masters.
Severance (2022)
Scenes from The Office segment of PlayTime (1967) by Jacques Tati
The subculture history of the internet – Cyberpunk [1990] Documentary
Why do we crave the awful futures of apocalyptic fiction?
In the first two decades of the new millennium, stories of the post-apocalypse have permeated pop culture, from books such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) to films and TV programmes such as The Walking Dead (2010-), the Hunger Games series (2012-15) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). While post-apocalyptic fictions of previous eras largely served as cautionary tales – against nuclear brinksmanship in On the Beach (1959) or weaponised biology in The Stand (1978) – today’s versions of these tales depict less alterable, more oblique and diffuse visions of our doom. So why can’t we seem to get enough of humanity’s unavoidable collapse and its bleak aftermath?
https://aeon.co/videos/why-do-we-crave-the-awful-futures-of-apocalyptic-fiction
Artificial intelligence and archive film: how The Light Surgeons put a new spin on Japan’s earliest moving images
Using AI to explore early footage of Japan, Tokinokawa is an ambitious installation merging the antique with the futuristic. From startling discoveries in the rushes to working with ambient pioneer Midori Takada, the creators tell us how it happened.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/light-surgeons-tokinokawa
What Our Fantasies About the European “Middle Ages” Say About Us
The fantastical imagery that many of us consider “medieval” today has been invented, at least in part, in the centuries since. While some legends are rooted in the period, like the stories of King Arthur and Camelot, many others were embroidered onto an imagined, “medieval-ish” past through fantasy stories, films, and other forms of popular culture, especially from the 19th century on. Modern medieval tales have become populated with knights, dragons, witches, and fairies — though, as the show explains, only the first two were frequently depicted in the period, and anything magical or mysterious was understood through the lens of religion. The exhibition pairs medieval and later imagery to explore these shifting depictions and the powerful legacy they have left.
https://hyperallergic.com/753042/fantasy-of-the-middle-ages-getty-center/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 