Free Republic

Docuseries host and prop collector Dan Lanigan embarks on a road trip through cinema history, meeting stars and creators of such classics as 'Mary Poppins' and 'The Muppet Movie.' Movie blockbusters aren’t what they used to be, and that doesn’t just apply to recent months with theaters closed. (Streaming anything good lately?) A few decades ago, when studios poured $50 to $100 million into films such as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Tron,” or “Mary Poppins,” the silver screen lit up with story ideas and visuals never before seen. Today, such budgets are most often reserved for paint-by-number remakes and tiring...

With the revived push for the Equal Rights Amendment has come a revived push to cast Phyllis Schlafly as a historical villain. These are revisionist efforts informed by ideological bias more than fact. With the revived push for the Equal Rights Amendment has come a revived push to cast Phyllis Schlafly as a historical villain. These are revisionist efforts informed by ideological bias more than fact. Enter “Mrs. America,” FX’s flashy new prestige offering starring Cate Blanchett as Schlafly. Last month, I interviewed Anne Schlafly Cori, daughter of the late conservative activist, about the six-episode series, which premieres on Hulu...

Believe it or not, streaming has become more popular as people continue to hole up indoors. The average person is streaming eight hours of content per day and has logins for at least four streaming services, according to a new study from OnePoll. The research firm’s new study, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, found the average person has access to four streaming services, while 38 percent of poll respondents said they logged into five or more platforms. There has been no shortage of reports about the increased interest in streaming film and television as more Americans practice social...

Among the many lasting cultural changes this pandemic is poised to bring about will be serious shifts in the entertainment industry. China started reopening its dormant movie theaters just as the U.S. box office “hit zero for the first time” last weekend. The lights were back on at only 5 percent of the country’s cinemas, and ticket sales were paltry. Now they’re dark again. As of Wednesday, more than 26,000 AMC employees were laid off or furloughed, including all 600 members of the China-owned theater chain’s corporate staff.Among the many lasting cultural changes this pandemic is poised to bring about...

During one of the many FaceTime chats that fill my evening calendar, my best friend Andy remarked, "You have to watch 'Tiger King.' You lived in Florida, so you will love it." Tigers? Florida? I was intrigued. What is "Tiger King?" Having literally no idea what it was about, I watched the trailer later that night. This tweet perfectly sums up my reaction:

CHICAGO (AP) - Rapper Juice WRLD, who launched his career on SoundCloud before becoming a streaming juggernaut and rose to the top of the charts with the Sting-sampled hit “Lucid Dreams,” died early Sunday after a “medical emergency” at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The rapper, whose legal name was Jarad A. Higgins, was 21. Authorities have not released details about his cause of death. He was pronounced dead at a hospital around 3:15 a.m. and taken to the Cook County medical examiner’s office several hours later, according to office spokeswoman Natalia Derevyanny, who said an autopsy would take place Monday....

Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, has already seen 10 million sign-ups since launching Tuesday, the company announced Wednesday. Disney’s stock was up 7.35% by Wednesday’s close, adding more than $13 billion to its market cap, which now sits at $268 billion. Netflix shares were down 3.1%. Disney’s new streaming service launched Tuesday with some technical errors that prevented some users from connecting with the service. But that didn’t stop customers from flooding the sign-up page. At $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, Disney+ is significantly cheaper than competitors such as Netflix, which charges $12.99 for its most popular standard...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 27, 2019 Eight Defendants Charged with Running Two of the Largest Illegal Television Show and Movie Streaming Services in the United States The Two Services Allegedly Offered More Television Programs and Movies than Legitimate Streaming Services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video A federal grand jury returned an indictment today charging eight individuals with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law by running two of the largest unauthorized streaming services in the United States, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars by television...

Pay-TV keeps taking hits in subscribers, with Leichtman Research Group finding in its latest quarterly report that about 1.53 million people dropped their pay-TV subscriptions during the second quarter of 2019. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of decline, per Leichtman, and more than a million of subscribers cutting their service from the same time period in 2018 (420,000). Consisting of the top 14 pay-TV services in the U.S. making up about 93% of the market, which includes satellite, cable, phone and vMVPDs. Satellite companies lost about 855,000 subscribers during Q2, with DirecTV accounting for 778,000 alone in its fifth...

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Heading into the new year, box office analysts were bullish that 2019 would beat, or at least match, the record-breaking success of last season. Followups to “Avengers,” “Secret Life of Pets” and “Godzilla” combined with reboots of storied franchises such as “Men in Black” and “Shaft” would elevate ticket sales to new heights, theater owners and studio executives predicted. Alas, it was not to be. Sure, everyone showed up to “Avengers: Endgame” to bid goodbye to Iron Man, but many of those other sequels sputtered out. They were derivative, shoddily constructed, and poorly...

Fueled by tremendous creative output by groundbreaking artists and now more than 50 million paid subscriptions, the U.S. music industry experienced its third year of consecutive growth in 2018 with retail revenues up 12% to $9.8 billion. Streaming now comprises 75% of total industry revenues. Vinyl continues to be a bright spot for the physical market, up 8% to $419 million, the highest revenue level since 1988.

On Tuesday afternoon, the AFL-CIO’s Twitter account posted a video of Dan Whelan, a 36-year-old roofer from Dearborn, Mich., stating that the concept of a middle class was a lie and calling for solidarity among workers. The union’s tweet, featuring the caption “We all need to seize the means of production” was derided on the right and applauded on the left, and was viewed nearly 400,000 times. Where did the video, with its Marxist-Leninist tagline, come from? It’s part of a fundraising campaign from Means TV, a Detroit-based film company that’s attempting the ambitious project of launching its own anticapitalist...

Netflix Inc. is expected to price its latest debt offering later Wednesday, a $2 billion offering of junk bonds that comes at a risky time for the streaming giant. Netflix NFLX, -1.89% is burning through cash at a fast pace and its outlook is less certain, given the pending competition from two major new entrants to the streaming market, Disney Co. DIS, +1.31% and Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.10% “We are concerned a misstep in its growth trajectory, while cash burn continues to mount, could result in material downside for Netflix bonds,” CreditSights analysts Mary Pollock and Jay Mayers wrote in...

The cancellation of "One Day at a Time" hurts in a way the diversity numbers can't fully convey. In Netflix's Cuban-American family sitcom, "One Day at a Time," Rita Moreno's punchy one-liners are a complete delight. Justina Machado, who stars as single mom Penelope Alvarez, triggers a sobfest every time she delivers an utterly vulnerable monologue. The series tackles issues from homophobia to colorism with sensitivity and insight, and offers Latinos -- members of a woefully underserved demographic -- the chance to see ourselves, warts and all, while still reliably delivering laughs and earning rave reviews. Aside from being a...

The top 11 U.S. pay TV operators lost 2.87 million customers in 2018, nearly double the 1.5 million the domestic ecosystem shed in 2017. These are the latest quarterly findings by Leichtman Research Group (LRG), which measures the leading operators covering 95% of the U.S. market. The big negative drivers were the two satellite TV companies, DirecTV and Dish Network, which lost a ton of customers on the linear side, but this time couldn’t make up for it with gains by their low-margin virtual pay TV services. The two satellite carriers lost a combined 2.36 million linear customers in 2018,...

Samsung [announced] that it was no longer making 4K players and has confirmed that it will also halt production on new 1080p models. "Samsung will no longer introduce new Blu-ray or 4K Blu-ray player models in the US market," a Samsung spokesperson told CNET.  Samsung launched its last 4K players in 2017 and didn't add any new models to its lineup in 2018. A high-end 4K player for 2019 along the lines of its UBD-M9500 was in the works, a Forbes report says, but has now been scrapped...

Structured as a nonprofit, the start-up aims to succeed where Aereo was litigated into oblivion. On the roof of a luxury building at the edge of Central Park, 585 feet above the concrete, a lawyer named David Goodfriend has attached a modest four-foot antenna that is a threat to the entire TV-industrial complex. The device is there to soak up TV signals coursing through the air — content from NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS and CBS, including megahits like “This Is Us” and this Sunday’s broadcast of Super Bowl LIII. Once plucked from the ether, the content is piped through the...

Netflix is raising its U.S. prices by 13 percent to 18 percent, its biggest increase since the company launched its streaming service 12 years ago. Its most popular plan will see the largest hike, to $13 per month from $11. That option offers high-definition streaming on up to two different internet-connected devices simultaneously. Even at the higher price, that plan is still a few dollars cheaper than HBO, whose streaming service charges $15 per month. The extra cash will help to pay for Netflix's huge investment in original shows and films and finance the heavy debt it has assumed to...

Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Lady Gaga's 2013 single "Do What U Want (With My Body)" featuring R. Kelly has been removed from music streaming services. Gaga promised on Twitter Wednesday that the track would be removed in response to the multiple sexual assault allegations that Kelly is facing. Official music videos for "Do What U Want (With My Body)" were also removed from YouTube, however, a video of Gaga and Kelly performing the song at the American Music Awards remains.

Hopefully, I can get some productive answers before the self-righteous "got rid of TV years ago" crowd shows up: I got rid of satellite TV service a couple of years ago. Since then, I've used "Sling" streaming TV service and "Hulu TV" streaming TV service. I'm done with Hulu TV's ridiculous user interface, constant "streaming" screens, lack of 5.1 audio, etc. I switched to Hulu TV from Sling because Hulu had Fox News and CBS sports, neither of which I've spent much time watching. It's just not worth Hulu TV's glaring negatives. I may switch back to Sling, but I...