Wall Street treated Bob Iger’s return to Disney like sweet candy and gobbled up shares. Now the sugar rush has worn off.
Iger’s promises to offer up creative freedom while also cutting costs and leaning into IP are already being tested in a wary market that’s watching the box office and other metrics closely. The pressure for financial discipline could prove a tough test for his transitional tenure.
The latest Marvel film’s underperformance is just one striking example of the obstacles in Iger’s way. With an end-of-weekend-three total of $187 million domestically and $420 million worldwide, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is on track to earn less in North America than “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and less worldwide than either previous “Ant-Man” film. Disney’s stock price ended Wednesday barely over $99, down from $117 a month ago after a confident performance by Iger on an earnings call.
The...
Iger’s promises to offer up creative freedom while also cutting costs and leaning into IP are already being tested in a wary market that’s watching the box office and other metrics closely. The pressure for financial discipline could prove a tough test for his transitional tenure.
The latest Marvel film’s underperformance is just one striking example of the obstacles in Iger’s way. With an end-of-weekend-three total of $187 million domestically and $420 million worldwide, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is on track to earn less in North America than “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and less worldwide than either previous “Ant-Man” film. Disney’s stock price ended Wednesday barely over $99, down from $117 a month ago after a confident performance by Iger on an earnings call.
The...
- 3/9/2023
- by Scott Mendelson
- The Wrap
Earlier this month, the military seized power in Myanmar. Citing irregularities in their November elections, they detained the de facto head of state, Aung San Suu Kyi, along with other members of her governing party, the National Movement for Democracy. A one-year state of emergency was declared.Like many Americans, peering out from behind the fog of our own transition of power, frightening and inane as it was, I had no idea what to make of these events. Intermittently, I reached for a base of understanding from the few paradoxical fragments I could recall. Aung San Suu Kyi had won a Nobel Peace Prize, I knew. She had also presided over the genocide of the country’s Muslim ethnic minority, the Rohingya—a genocide which was unique to the extent that it was the first of such atrocities to be incited to a significant degree via Facebook. But my reflection...
- 2/28/2021
- MUBI
Mayfield Depot, Manchester
It's an irony, given his obsession with our surveillance culture, that if you were to cast the voice of Orwell's Big Brother, Adam Curtis would be hard to beat. The BBC documentary-maker – justly celebrated for series that include The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace – speaks with such paternal conviction, such stylish wisdom, that given half a day in a film archive you suspect he could have you believe pretty much anything. This Manchester international festival collaboration with Bristol-based trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack is billed as a playful showdown, a versus, in the manner of a rap contest or a prize fight; the vast derelict train depot in which this battle is being staged over 10 nights offers a suitably raw-boned backdrop for the high-decibel stand-off – earplugs are given out at the door – but it quickly becomes...
It's an irony, given his obsession with our surveillance culture, that if you were to cast the voice of Orwell's Big Brother, Adam Curtis would be hard to beat. The BBC documentary-maker – justly celebrated for series that include The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace – speaks with such paternal conviction, such stylish wisdom, that given half a day in a film archive you suspect he could have you believe pretty much anything. This Manchester international festival collaboration with Bristol-based trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack is billed as a playful showdown, a versus, in the manner of a rap contest or a prize fight; the vast derelict train depot in which this battle is being staged over 10 nights offers a suitably raw-boned backdrop for the high-decibel stand-off – earplugs are given out at the door – but it quickly becomes...
- 7/6/2013
- by Tim Adams
- The Guardian - Film News
Director releases trailer for show with Robert del Naja of Massive Attack that will premiere at the Manchester International Festival, and feature Elizabeth Fraser and Horace Andy
Reading on mobile? Watch here
The film-maker Adam Curtis has provided a glimpse of the new work he is prepating with Robert del Naja of Massive Attack for the Manchester International Festival – a piece that he calls "a Glim – a new way of integrating a gig with a film".
It has also been revealed that the show, titled "Massive Attack v Adam Curtis", will feature two guest performers: Elizabeth Fraser, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, and reggae singer Horace Andy. Massive Attack will also play live.
"The show will be a bit of a total experience. You will be surrounded by all kinds of images and sounds," said Curtis, director of films including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares.
Reading on mobile? Watch here
The film-maker Adam Curtis has provided a glimpse of the new work he is prepating with Robert del Naja of Massive Attack for the Manchester International Festival – a piece that he calls "a Glim – a new way of integrating a gig with a film".
It has also been revealed that the show, titled "Massive Attack v Adam Curtis", will feature two guest performers: Elizabeth Fraser, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, and reggae singer Horace Andy. Massive Attack will also play live.
"The show will be a bit of a total experience. You will be surrounded by all kinds of images and sounds," said Curtis, director of films including The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares.
- 6/20/2013
- by Caspar Llewellyn Smith
- The Guardian - Film News
"'Adam Curtis is not an artist, but a television journalist,' notes Hans Ulrich Obrist in his press release for the Adam Curtis retrospective [The Desperate Edge of Now] at e-flux through April 14th." Erin Nixon for Idiom: "Obrist's decision to show the work of Curtis serves a timely and important function: to break down what divides art and political reportage as both disciplines struggle to make sense of our current political and economic uncertainty. As Obrist notes, many artists have become interested in Curtis's work, which combines avant-garde filmmaking and journalistic investigation, offering a radical critique of the contemporary world that not only analyzes the ideologies that shape our world but counters them formally. Similar to the way that early 20th century artists opposed to traditional art made 'anti-art,' Curtis makes anti-propaganda films by subverting the political documentary."
Last month in Moving Image Source, Michael Atkinson argued that Curtis is "the 21st century's calm,...
Last month in Moving Image Source, Michael Atkinson argued that Curtis is "the 21st century's calm,...
- 3/20/2012
- MUBI
Quite the rave from Roberta Smith in the New York Times:
One of the best Whitney Biennials in recent memory may or may not contain a lot more outstanding art than its predecessors, but that's not the point. The 2012 incarnation is a new and exhilarating species of exhibition, an emerging curatorial life form, at least for New York.
Possessed of a remarkable clarity of vision, a striking spatial intelligence and a generous stylistic inclusiveness, it places on an equal footing art objects and time-based art — not just video and performance art but music, dance, theater, film — and does so on a scale and with a degree of aplomb we have not seen before in this town. In a way that is at once superbly ordered and open-ended, densely structured and, upon first encounter, deceptively unassuming, the exhibition manages both to reinvent the signature show of the Whitney Museum of American...
One of the best Whitney Biennials in recent memory may or may not contain a lot more outstanding art than its predecessors, but that's not the point. The 2012 incarnation is a new and exhilarating species of exhibition, an emerging curatorial life form, at least for New York.
Possessed of a remarkable clarity of vision, a striking spatial intelligence and a generous stylistic inclusiveness, it places on an equal footing art objects and time-based art — not just video and performance art but music, dance, theater, film — and does so on a scale and with a degree of aplomb we have not seen before in this town. In a way that is at once superbly ordered and open-ended, densely structured and, upon first encounter, deceptively unassuming, the exhibition manages both to reinvent the signature show of the Whitney Museum of American...
- 3/3/2012
- MUBI
Charlie Brooker’s pack of 3 stand-alone shows has certainly raised eyebrows with its controversial content but has won plaudits both from critics and the viewing public. The final episode aired last night and the series has left many thinking he should be up for some awards come ceremony time. Does he deserve a BAFTA? Many think so, and if he does achieve that recognition it will have been quite a journey for a man who was once known merely as a venomous critic, spitting vitriol over prime time television.
When the big HBO shows were first aired on this side of the pond I excitedly tuned in every Sunday evening to watch these soon-to-be classics. The Sopranos, Deadwood and 6 Feet Under were like nothing I’d seen before. At the same time I was a regular reader of The Guide, the Guardian’s Saturday supplement, in which Charlie Brooker wrote his Screen Burn column.
When the big HBO shows were first aired on this side of the pond I excitedly tuned in every Sunday evening to watch these soon-to-be classics. The Sopranos, Deadwood and 6 Feet Under were like nothing I’d seen before. At the same time I was a regular reader of The Guide, the Guardian’s Saturday supplement, in which Charlie Brooker wrote his Screen Burn column.
- 12/19/2011
- by A.W. Wilson
- Obsessed with Film
In late 2002, CIA officers at Guantanamo Bay reportedly rented the 1998 Roland Emmerich flick "Godzilla." The film had largely failed to engage the interest of even the most explosion-happy action fans, but the agents were not looking to be entertained. Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al Qaeda operative, had confessed to them under interrogation that the terrorist organization had made plans to blow up "the bridge in the Godzilla movie." Had the officers been familiar with the movie they would have known he was talking about the Brooklyn Bridge.
The possibility that a Saudi terrorist knew more about Hollywood than a roomful of American intelligence officials may be obvious in its irony, but isn't unlikely. The men who conceived of and carried out the September 11th attacks were infatuated with American entertainment (the young Bin Laden was said to have been particularly taken with "Bonanza").
The template for the Hollywood action movie is the Western,...
The possibility that a Saudi terrorist knew more about Hollywood than a roomful of American intelligence officials may be obvious in its irony, but isn't unlikely. The men who conceived of and carried out the September 11th attacks were infatuated with American entertainment (the young Bin Laden was said to have been particularly taken with "Bonanza").
The template for the Hollywood action movie is the Western,...
- 9/9/2011
- by Saki Knafo
- Huffington Post
"No longer critically marginalized as of lesser importance than the fiction feature film, no longer automatically regarded as 'box-office poison,' and with many of its most notable works stimulating widespread debate throughout print and electronic media, the documentary today is enjoying an unprecedented outburst of creative vitality," write the editors of Cineaste in the new Summer 2011 issue. What's more, the rapid evolution of digital technology has made it possible for documentarians to move fast, to fashion raw material culled from ongoing events into cohesive narratives, arguments and/or essays. Case in point: Zero Silence (site; image above), an up-to-the-minute report on the generation that's brought on the Arab Spring, drawing on footage shot between November 2009 and — literally — just a few days ago.
Not only is Zero Silence screening at the Sheffield Doc/Fest (site), running through Sunday, but we're also teaming up with the festival to present it here,...
Not only is Zero Silence screening at the Sheffield Doc/Fest (site), running through Sunday, but we're also teaming up with the festival to present it here,...
- 6/12/2011
- MUBI
Documentary-maker behind Power of Nightmares also calls Twitter a 'self aggrandising, smug pressure group'
Adam Curtis, the documentary-maker behind Power of Nightmares, has said he may draw inspiration from hit HBO series The Wire for his next major TV project.
In a wide-ranging interview at the Sheffield Doc/Fest Curtis also attacked Twitter as a "self aggrandising, smug pressure group" which promoted a "narrow non-social view of the world".
He said the site has been used by journalists reporting the Arab spring to simplify the complexities of the uprisings to narrow stories of individuals writing on the site.
"Twitter is fun and it feeds the rat of the self but it is almost as if you miss large chunks of the world [through it]," he said.
Speaking about ideas for his next project Curtis, whose three-part series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace recently aired to acclaim on BBC2, said...
Adam Curtis, the documentary-maker behind Power of Nightmares, has said he may draw inspiration from hit HBO series The Wire for his next major TV project.
In a wide-ranging interview at the Sheffield Doc/Fest Curtis also attacked Twitter as a "self aggrandising, smug pressure group" which promoted a "narrow non-social view of the world".
He said the site has been used by journalists reporting the Arab spring to simplify the complexities of the uprisings to narrow stories of individuals writing on the site.
"Twitter is fun and it feeds the rat of the self but it is almost as if you miss large chunks of the world [through it]," he said.
Speaking about ideas for his next project Curtis, whose three-part series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace recently aired to acclaim on BBC2, said...
- 6/10/2011
- by Ben Dowell
- The Guardian - Film News
The maker of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares believes he is still learning his trade
Adam Curtis insists that he is not a documentary maker, but a journalist who tells stories that "take serious journalism and fine tune it with low-end trash and jokes" and he dismisses anyone who considers his films – with their unique convergence of quick-fire visual images and off-beat music and background noises – to be some kind of modern art form.
In fact, the former academic and producer of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares goes out of his way to be self-effacing about the effect of his films; they may have won him six Baftas, but he believes he is still learning and at the moment his teacher is the internet.
When we meet to talk in a north London restaurant on a Sunday morning,...
Adam Curtis insists that he is not a documentary maker, but a journalist who tells stories that "take serious journalism and fine tune it with low-end trash and jokes" and he dismisses anyone who considers his films – with their unique convergence of quick-fire visual images and off-beat music and background noises – to be some kind of modern art form.
In fact, the former academic and producer of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares goes out of his way to be self-effacing about the effect of his films; they may have won him six Baftas, but he believes he is still learning and at the moment his teacher is the internet.
When we meet to talk in a north London restaurant on a Sunday morning,...
- 6/6/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
A documentary film-maker who can link the colour revolutions of eastern Europe to the communes of California
If you are looking for a documentary film-maker who can link the colour revolutions of eastern Europe to the communes of California – via the botanist Arthur Tansley, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Jay Forrester, Ayn Rand, cybernetics, and machine theory – then Adam Curtis is your man. Curtis aims each of his series at a well-defined target, even if it turns out to be a somewhat idiosyncratic one. In The Century of the Self (2002) it was how Freud's theories were used as a means of control in an age of mass democracy. In The Power of Nightmares (2004) it was the deadly symbiosis of nm1998554 autoLeo Strauss[/link]'s neoconservatism and Islamic jihadism. In his current series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the target is the illusion that nature is self-balancing, and how machines...
If you are looking for a documentary film-maker who can link the colour revolutions of eastern Europe to the communes of California – via the botanist Arthur Tansley, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Jay Forrester, Ayn Rand, cybernetics, and machine theory – then Adam Curtis is your man. Curtis aims each of his series at a well-defined target, even if it turns out to be a somewhat idiosyncratic one. In The Century of the Self (2002) it was how Freud's theories were used as a means of control in an age of mass democracy. In The Power of Nightmares (2004) it was the deadly symbiosis of nm1998554 autoLeo Strauss[/link]'s neoconservatism and Islamic jihadism. In his current series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the target is the illusion that nature is self-balancing, and how machines...
- 5/31/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
If you think machines have liberated us, think again, says film-maker Adam Curtis. Instead we have lost our vision
It was amateur footage of an event involving an early video game called Pong that gave Adam Curtis the idea for his new documentary series.
In 1991, a computer engineer from California called Loren Carpenter organised a mass experiment in a huge shed. Hundreds of people were each given a paddle, and told nothing. But on a big screen in front of them was projected a game of Pong – a very basic computer game, where a ball is knocked back and forth on a screen, like table tennis. Each half of the audience jointly controlled the bat on their side of the screen; they had to operate it together and, spontaneously and without discussion, they successfully played a game of Pong, whooping and cheering at their collective collaboration.
"It was like a switch went in my head,...
It was amateur footage of an event involving an early video game called Pong that gave Adam Curtis the idea for his new documentary series.
In 1991, a computer engineer from California called Loren Carpenter organised a mass experiment in a huge shed. Hundreds of people were each given a paddle, and told nothing. But on a big screen in front of them was projected a game of Pong – a very basic computer game, where a ball is knocked back and forth on a screen, like table tennis. Each half of the audience jointly controlled the bat on their side of the screen; they had to operate it together and, spontaneously and without discussion, they successfully played a game of Pong, whooping and cheering at their collective collaboration.
"It was like a switch went in my head,...
- 5/6/2011
- by Katharine Viner
- The Guardian - Film News
"The indie Texan filmmaker David Lowery receives a double bill at the reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and while Pioneer, a 16-minute short, and St Nick, an 86-minute feature, don't provide hard answers to their mysteries, both are deeply intriguing," writes Andy Webster in the New York Times. Regarding St Nick, a "potentially stifling ambience is deflected by quiet suspense and the awe-inspiring compositions of the cinematographer, Clay Liford. Decaying rustic interiors evoke Andrew Wyeth still lifes; pastoral long shots suggest a Southwestern walkabout. And Mr Lowery seems ready for a bigger canvas."
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
- 4/23/2011
- MUBI
From Kevin MacDonald's examination of the YouTube phenomenon to a cab ride with Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, cheap technology is allowing film-makers to stretch the form as never before
"Right now, documentary film-making is like malaria," says Hussain Currimbhoy, curator of the Sheffield Doc/Fest, Britain's premier showcase for new documentaries from around the world. "It's a virus that's spreading fast and far and wide."
In the past week, the festival has screened 120 new documentaries – including shorts as well as feature-length films – from 26 countries. As well as fly-on-the wall documentaries about well-known figures, such as the American comedian Joan Rivers and the English playwright Alan Bennett, there were music documentaries about subjects as diverse as Elgar and Heaven 17, and biographical documentaries about the beat poet William Burroughs, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and a taxi driver who once worked as Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
This year,...
"Right now, documentary film-making is like malaria," says Hussain Currimbhoy, curator of the Sheffield Doc/Fest, Britain's premier showcase for new documentaries from around the world. "It's a virus that's spreading fast and far and wide."
In the past week, the festival has screened 120 new documentaries – including shorts as well as feature-length films – from 26 countries. As well as fly-on-the wall documentaries about well-known figures, such as the American comedian Joan Rivers and the English playwright Alan Bennett, there were music documentaries about subjects as diverse as Elgar and Heaven 17, and biographical documentaries about the beat poet William Burroughs, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and a taxi driver who once worked as Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard.
This year,...
- 11/7/2010
- by Sean O'Hagan
- The Guardian - Film News
LONDON -- The BBC bagged a total of 39 nominations in this year's British Academy Television Awards, the United Kingdom's premiere TV awards ceremony, ahead of Channel 4 with 17, ITV with 14 and one nomination each for the Five channel and Sky News. BBC News 24 was nominated for its coverage of the Hutton inquiry, which resulted in the resignation of BBC director general Greg Dyke last year. It faces competition from The BBC 10 O'clock News coverage of the Madrid bombing and reporting on the Asian tsunami disaster by both Sky News and ITV1's ITN. BBC2's travel show Himalaya With Michael Palin competes in the factual series category against Channel 4's Brat Camp, BBC2's The Power of Nightmares and BBC2's Who Do You Think You Are?...
- 3/15/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
LONDON -- The BBC bagged a total of 39 nominations in this year's British Academy Television Awards, the United Kingdom's premiere TV awards ceremony, ahead of Channel 4 with 17, ITV with 14 and one nomination each for the Five channel and Sky News. BBC News 24 was nominated for its coverage of the Hutton inquiry, which resulted in the resignation of BBC director general Greg Dyke last year. It faces competition from The BBC 10 O'clock News coverage of the Madrid bombing and reporting on the Asian tsunami disaster by both Sky News and ITV1's ITN. BBC2's travel show Himalaya With Michael Palin competes in the factual series category against Channel 4's Brat Camp, BBC2's The Power of Nightmares and BBC2's Who Do You Think You Are?...
- 3/15/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The BBC bagged a total of 39 nominations in this year's BAFTA television awards, the U.K.'s premier TV awards ceremony, ahead of Channel 4 with 17, ITV with 14 and one nomination apiece for the Five channel and Sky News. BBC News 24 was nominated for its coverage of the Hutton inquiry, which resulted in the resignation last year of BBC director general Greg Dyke. It faces competition from The BBC 10 O'clock News coverage of the Madrid bombing and reporting on the Asian Tsunami disaster by both Sky News and ITV1's ITN. BBC2's travel show Himalaya with Michael Palin competes in the factual series category against Channel 4's Brat Camp, BBC2's The Power of Nightmares, and BBC2's Who Do You Think You Are?...
- 3/14/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The BBC bagged a total of 39 nominations in this year's BAFTA television awards, the U.K.'s premier TV awards ceremony, ahead of Channel 4 with 17, ITV with 14 and one nomination apiece for the Five channel and Sky News. BBC News 24 was nominated for its coverage of the Hutton inquiry, which resulted in the resignation last year of BBC director general Greg Dyke. It faces competition from The BBC 10 O'clock News coverage of the Madrid bombing and reporting on the Asian Tsunami disaster by both Sky News and ITV1's ITN. BBC2's travel show Himalaya with Michael Palin competes in the factual series category against Channel 4's Brat Camp, BBC2's The Power of Nightmares, and BBC2's Who Do You Think You Are?...
- 3/14/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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