Tag Archive: media

A Month of Kurosawa: Scandal (1950)

To celebrate the upcoming release of my book, Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide, due out Dec. 15 from Rowman & Littlefield — preorder here! — I’ll be doing capsule reviews all month covering every single Kurosawa film and posting (very) brief excerpts. These will be short impressions and recommendations, nothing more. For a full, detailed analysis of each, grab the book! Scandal (1950) In the years immediately following the end of World War II, Akira Kurosawa found himself increasingly frustrated with the sometimes salacious turn Japan’s newly free media had taken, with too many tabloids dishing out celebrity gossip and rumors. With Scandal, he decided to confront that issue head-on. Well, until Takashi Shimura’s character began to steal the spotlight, that is. Here, an artist portrayed…
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Someone shot up my friend’s workplace – and it should scare you as much as it scared him

On Sunday morning, someone took aim at the offices of the Lexington Herald-Leader, a major newspaper in Kentucky, and apparently shot the place up. Several windows were shattered and what appear to be bullet holes were found in other spots on the building, including in some windows on the press room. This was accompanied by a bomb threat at a newspaper processing plant down the road owned by another newspaper. It may have been a random act of violent vandalism, but I’m not so sure. A friend of mind works there. For obvious reasons I won’t name him. He’s shaken. He should be. He’s gotten threatening phone calls before — as a former small town journalist, I can say from experience that irrationally angry readers are…
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John Oliver, journalism, and why the Newspaper Association of America are morons

John Oliver, the Daily Show alum who has since moved to HBO and is winning fans across the ‘Net for his self-deprecating, funny, and sometimes insightful investigative pieces, recently did a segment on journalism in America today. Most of what he discusses is old hat to those who have been in the business for a while — I remember having these discussions with colleagues more than a decade ago and spending many years struggling (and failing) to convince a former employer to move into the 21th Century — but it remains a relevant and worthwhile discussion even today. Hell, even more today than ever. The stories I hear from friends still in the business are enough to make a grown man cry. Things are only made…
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News & Media Overload: Living in fear is no way to live

Read the comments on any news story involving a violent crime or follow any active news feed, and you will see comment after comment lamenting the state of the world and talking about how fearful we have to be of, well, pretty much everyone. If the comments at your local news site are anything to go by, you could be the victim of a home invasion at any moment. Your children are in danger of being snatched up 24 hours a day. That guy in your neighborhood taking a walk is probably a rapist. And so on. The problem with all this fear is that it’s largely baseless. Unless you live in a community like Camden, NJ or St. Louis, MO, chances are that you’re…
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