Archives for March 2022

Jaden Smith, one of the Smiths’ children, tweeted simply: “And That’s How We Do It.”

The reaction inside and outside Hollywood ranged widely. In interviews following the show, at after-parties and on social media, Smith’s colleagues variously expressed sadness, confusion, disbelief, anger and, in some cases, empathy. Many deflected or ignored questions about the episode entirely.

The actor Mark Hamill called it the ugliest Oscars moment. “Stand-up comics are very adept at handling hecklers,” he wrote on Twitter. “Violent physical assault … not so much. #UgliestOscarMoment_Ever.”

One top studio executive, who declined to speak on the record, voiced disappointment in Smith and in the fact that the audience in the theater gave him a standing ovation.

And Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, worried aloud in a tweet that “the way casual violence was normalized tonight by a collective national audience will have consequences that we can’t even fathom in the moment.”

Others seemed to defend Mr. Smith. “Many takes on here about Will Smith and Chris Rock, especially from people whose partners are not Black women (mainly white people),” the author Frederick Joseph tweeted. “I don’t care if it’s a joke or not, the amount Black women have to endure — people are tired of it. We have no idea what Jada has gone through.”

And the comedian Tiffany Haddish, who starred in the movie “Girls Trip” with Ms. Pinkett Smith, said in an interview with People magazine at an after-party that she appreciated seeing Mr. Smith protect his wife.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/movies/oscars-will-smith-slap-reactions.html

The early data did not indicate whether there was a surge in viewership after the slap, which immediately ricocheted around the internet.

Organizers have been desperate to reverse a yearslong ratings slide for the Oscars, which saw viewership last year plummet 58 percent. To perk up interest, they hired the comics Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes to host a show that had been hostless since 2019; relegated some awards to a pretaped segment to hurry along what still clocked in at more than 3.5 hours; and invited fans to vote on Twitter for their favorite film (Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead”).

The broadcast hit its peak in 1998, when 55.2 million viewers tuned in to watch “Titanic” sweep the awards, and has struggled to retain its cultural relevance since. Awards shows took an additional hit during the pandemic but had already been facing criticism for being too white, too long, too politicized and too boring. Viewership for the Grammy Awards, which will be held this weekend, slumped 53 percent to a new low last year; NBCUniversal declined to even broadcast this year’s Golden Globes.

Mr. Smith’s attack happened after Mr. Rock, who was handing out the award for best documentary, joked about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her closely cropped hair.

“Jada, I love you — ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it, all right?,” he said, referencing the 1997 film ‘G.I. Jane,’ which featured Demi Moore sporting a buzz cut.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/business/media/oscars-ratings-2022.html

In one day, that episode was viewed almost 220,000 times on Rumble, which has experienced explosive growth since conservatives and supporters of former President Donald J. Trump embraced it after the 2020 election. Its users and financial backers see it as the new frontier in social media — a network built by and for them, where virtually anything goes.

Rumble’s chief executive pitches the company, which is based in Toronto, as “immune from cancel culture.” It has tens of millions of dollars in financing from right-of-center entrepreneurs like the billionaire Peter Thiel, and Mr. Trump entered into an arrangement for Rumble to provide his new social media service, Truth Social, with the technology and operational support that it lacked itself.

Once better known for viral videos of cats and toddlers, Rumble now draws 44 million monthly visitors, according to the analytics firm Similarweb, giving it a larger reach than other top destinations for conservative content, including Breitbart, Newsmax and The Daily Wire. In the first nine months of last year, the most recently available financial information, Rumble generated more than $6.5 million in revenue, most of it from advertising, but was not profitable. It has announced plans to trade publicly, as soon as the middle of this year, after merging with a special purpose acquisition company.

The story of Rumble’s success is instructive for both sides of the tense debate over balancing the right to free speech with the growing threat that disinformation poses to the stability of governments around the globe. For those who argue that Google and Facebook algorithms are blunt, deeply flawed instruments for policing discourse, Rumble offers a welcome alternative, albeit an imperfect one. And for those who fear that lawmakers and technology companies aren’t doing enough to tame false and fabricated information ahead of the next presidential election, Rumble has opened up a potentially dangerous loophole.

“There is something very significant about Rumble that I don’t think people appreciate,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog. Mr. Carusone said the painstaking work that went into persuading Facebook, Google and Twitter to be more aggressive about policing fake and inciting content prevented a lot of it from breaking through to a wider audience.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/business/media/rumble-social-media-conservatives-videos.html

Behind the scenes at the Oscars, there were serious discussions about removing Smith from the theater, according to an industry official with knowledge of the situation who was granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. But there was only a brief window of time for discussions, since the best actor award, which Smith was heavily favored to win, was fast approaching, the person noted — and there were many stakeholders, with varying opinions on how to proceed. Officials were also trying to ensure Rock had not been seriously injured, the person said.

After delivering the blow, Smith returned to his seat, remained in the theater and then was cheered when he collected his trophy for best actor. In his speech Smith apologized to the Academy and to his fellow nominees but not to Rock, and defiantly sought to draw parallels to the character he played in “King Richard,” the fiercely protective father of Venus and Serena Williams. He received a standing ovation.

“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” he said.

Comedians, who tell uncomfortable and sometimes offensive jokes for a living, raised concerns about the precedent Smith had set.

“Let me tell you something, it’s a very bad practice to walk up onstage and physically assault a Comedian,” Kathy Griffin tweeted. “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.”

Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian and talk show host who had been the last person to host the Oscars, said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that he felt bad for the hosts, Questlove, who won the award Rock was presenting, and Rock, who he said “certainly didn’t deserve that.”

“In a way, I feel bad for Will Smith too, because I think he let his emotions get the better of him, and this should have been one of the great nights of his life,” Kimmel said. “And now it’s not. Was there anyone who didn’t like Will Smith an hour ago in the world? Like no one, right? Now he doesn’t have a single comedian friend — that’s for sure.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/movies/oscars-will-smith-slap-reactions.html

Notably, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not mentioned during the opening to the lighthearted show, which featured a D.J., a second standup routine from Schumer, and a sketch from Hall that found a shirtless Chalamet and other male stars onstage. Three sports stars — Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater and Shaun White — arrived to introduce a montage celebrating 60 years of the James Bond franchise. (The academy finally acknowledged the war in Ukraine with a moment of silence after Reba McEntire’s performance of a nominated song, “Somehow You Do,” and by flashing the hashtag #StandWithUkraine on the screen.)

In a startling break from academy custom, the telecast was used as an overt promo for some coming movies. Chris Evans introduced a commercial for “Lightyear,” a coming “Toy Story” prequel from Pixar that will arrive exclusively in theaters in June. A lengthy pretaped promotion for the academy’s new museum in Los Angeles featured Sykes taking a tour.

Last year, the television audience for the Academy Awards dropped so precipitously (down 60 percent from 2020, already a record low) that organizers decided to rework the live broadcast. The presentation of Oscars in eight categories — the less-starry ones — was moved to a nontelevised portion, with the academy saying it would record the acceptance speeches and integrate edited bits into the main show. Cue howls of dismay, both from movie fans and from the sidelined artists.

But the academy stood firm. “Dune,” which was nominated in 10 categories in total, won the Oscars for best sound, score, production design and editing during what the academy had branded “the Golden Hour” in an attempt to assuage bruised egos. Hans Zimmer, who wrote the “Dune” score, was not on hand to accept the Oscar, the second of his career after “The Lion King” (1995), with a presenter explaining that he was away on tour.

The team behind Chastain’s transformation into a televangelist with tarantula eyelashes in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” won the Oscar for makeup and hairstyling. Chastain embraced the group from her seat in the front row. (The celebrity quotient during the nontelevised portion of the ceremony grew as the hour went on, with seat fillers on heavy rotation.)

The short-film winners were “The Windshield Wiper,” the animated story of a man contemplating love in a cafe while smoking a pack of cigarettes; “The Long Goodbye,” a violent live-action short starring and co-written by Riz Ahmed that takes place in the lead-up to a wedding; and “Queen of Basketball,” a 22-minute New York Times documentary about Lusia Harris, the first and only woman ever officially drafted into the N.B.A.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/movies/the-oscars-2022.html

“This is not simply a war, this is much worse,” Mr. Zelensky said. “A global, historical, cultural split has happened over this month.”

Mr. Zelensky’s descriptions of the violence of Russia’s invasion ran directly counter to the Kremlin narrative, which accuses Ukrainians of firing on their own cities and blames them for any civilian casualties and urban destruction. He said that the port city of Mariupol was “littered with corpses — no one is removing them — Russian soldiers and Ukrainian citizens.”

He also accused the Russian government of forcibly taking more than 2,000 children from Mariupol, saying that “their location is unknown.” He said that he had told his officials that Ukraine would halt all negotiations with Russia “if they will steal our children.”

Mr. Putin has received grossly exaggerated reports about the attitude of the Ukrainian people toward Russia and its government, Mr. Zelensky said.

“They probably said that we are waiting for you here, smiling and with flowers,” he said, adding that the Russian government “does not see Ukraine as an independent state, but some kind of a product, a part of a bigger organism that the current Russian president sees himself as the head of.”

After Meduza, Mr. Dzyadko and Mr. Zygar published the interview, the Russian prosecutor general’s office released its own threat. It said it would conduct a “legal assessment” of Mr. Zelensky’s statements and their publication, given “the context of mass anti-Russian propaganda and the regular placement of false information about the actions of the Russian Federation” in Ukraine.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t tragic,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video posted to his account on Telegram, commenting on the Kremlin’s frantic censorship efforts. “This means that they are nervous. Perhaps they saw that their citizens are beginning to question the situation in their own country.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/world/europe/russia-media-zelensky.html

“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Mr. Wallace said of his time at the network. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”

Still, he acknowledged that some viewers may wonder why he did not leave earlier.

“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he said, adding: “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”

Fox News declined to comment.

Mr. Wallace said his new CNN+ series, which airs at 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, was inspired by the work of famed interviewers like Larry King and Charlie Rose. (His father, the “60 Minutes” legend Mike Wallace, hosted a versatile interview program of his own in the late 1950s, with guests ranging from Henry Kissinger to the actress Jean Seberg.)

The set of the show is sparse, just Mr. Wallace and a guest sitting on either side of a Plexiglas table — a more brightly lit version of Mr. Rose’s long-running PBS format. Mr. Wallace said he hoped “to have the kind of intimate, thoughtful conversation where we forget we’re on camera in a studio.”

Marketing materials for CNN+ prominently feature Mr. Wallace alongside younger hosts like the former NPR host Audie Cornish, the chef Alison Roman and the actress Eva Longoria. The advanced ages of some of his early guests — Ms. Collins is 82, and Mr. Shatner just turned 91 — also suggest that Mr. Wallace’s program might complement more millennial-focused fare.

The service, which costs $6 a month, debuts on Tuesday, years after the arrival of streaming competitors like Fox Nation and the CBS News Streaming Network. CNN executives view it as a major effort to gain a foothold with viewers who are abandoning cable subscriptions in favor of online alternatives for news.

The stakes are high for CNN, which is undergoing wrenching change. The channel’s parent company, WarnerMedia, is expected to be acquired by Discovery Inc. in the next few weeks. A new president, Chris Licht, is taking over CNN after the network’s longtime leader, Jeff Zucker, resigned in February over an undisclosed relationship with a colleague.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/business/media/chris-wallace-cnn-fox-news.html