Latest news with #Underland
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Jane Rosenthal Warns Political Documentaries Could Be Waning: ‘I'm Worried'
Jane Rosenthal is taking the pulse of the nonfiction feature space — and it doesn't look good. The mega-producer and Tribeca co-founder told Variety during a recent interview that she is 'worried' about how documentaries are faring, especially amid the current political climate and rise in streaming. When asked how the 'business' of documentary films are going — citing how the Tribeca Festival is known for spotlighting pioneering docs — Rosenthal lamented that perhaps the golden age of political documentaries has passed. More from IndieWire Darren Aronofsky Produces 'Mythological' Cave Documentary 'Underland' with Sandra Hüller Narrating - Watch the First Look 'Stealing Pulp Fiction' Trailer: Cazzie David Helps Plan a Heist of Quentin Tarantino's Personal 35mm Print 'I'm worried about that space,' Rosenthal said. 'Fewer places are buying hard-hitting documentaries. If it's about true crime, you'll get a deal someplace. The bigger platforms — Netflix and Amazon — want more celebrity stories and sports stories. But for political stories, it's harder to find a home.' It's a concern that many documentaries and distributors alike have also voiced: 'We are caught in this terrible place with what's been happening on the commercial side with streaming companies focusing on true crime above everything else, and the existential threat on the public media side,' a documentary industry insider recently told IndieWire. Companies are pulling back on buying docs, as A24 all but shuttered their doc division, laying off five employees, which was a majority of the staff. After getting an Oscar win for 'Navalny,' CNN limited their nonfiction production, while 'No Other Land' didn't even land a distributor before winning an Oscar. Nonfiction programming at Showtime Networks, which produced Oscar-nominated 'Attica' in 2022, closed, along with 'An Inconvenient Truth,' 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,' and 'American Factory' producer studio Participant. Political documentarians have now had to turn to self-distribution; 'Union' and 'Zurawski v Texas,' despite the latter being executive produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence, all were self-distributed by their respective filmmakers. Netflix VP of original documentary films and limited series Adam Del Deo told IndieWire's Anne Thompson that after winning Oscars for 'Icarus,' 'American Factory,' and 'My Octopus Teacher,' the demand for documentaries has grown on the platform. Yet how much of that demand are for political films versus celebrity-driven features? 'We want to program titles that our members as a whole are going to love,' Del Deo said. 'Some of those are going to be biopics, some of the content is going to be in the true crime space. And some is going to be in sports. There are also members that like films that are about topics that are important to them. That may not be the biggest audience, but we want to also be able to deliver those titles as well. So it's really about variety.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Times
28-04-2025
- Times
Robert Macfarlane takes an epic trip down three great rivers
A new book from Robert Macfarlane is a literary event. A Cambridge professor and bestselling author, he is the grand panjandrum of British nature writing. In a suite of adventurous, poetic and thoughtful books, he has roamed and probed the landscape, from mountains (Mountains of the Mind) and the wilderness (The Wild Places) to ancient pathways (The Old Ways) and subterranean spaces (Underland). Now he has turned to rivers. Is a River Alive? recounts three short but eventful journeys to the Ecuadorian cloud forest, to the waterways of Chennai in southeast India and to the Mutehekau Shipu, a whitewater river in Quebec, Canada, where things nearly go epically wrong. Between each trip he makes a small pilgrimage,
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The best books to get now — and look forward to in Spring
Daffodils have started to appear and it feels as though we are finally emerging from what has been a particularly gloomy and chilly winter. We can't promise you blue skies and cherry blossom from now on in, but below are the new titles currently giving us life, from a landmark record of queer existence to a cautionary novel about the perils of having a cleaner. There's also a new book from the brilliant Malaysian novelist Tash Aw — the first in a planned quartet — and a new novel from the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Abdulrazak Gurnah. One of Britain's foremost writers, and a driver of the revival in nature writing, Robert Macfarlane, has a new book out, his first since 2019's spooky Underland. As we emerge from the 'indoor months' these are the perfect books to persuade us straight back inside again to the sofa. This may be the previously Booker-longlisted Tash Aw's best book yet. Tantalisingly, it's also the first in a planned quartet. Jay is a young, somewhat directionless man overshadowed by his sisters in what appears to be Malaysia. It's unclear exactly when it's set — people own mobile phones but it appears to be a time of economic upheaval. He travels with his parents and siblings to the south of the country to claim the farm that his father has inherited. It is run by the father's illegitimate half-brother, Jack, whose son Chuan befriends Jay. The relationship between the two boys becomes sexual in a way that feels both surprising and entirely natural. Let's hope the rest of the series can equal this mesmerising start. 4th Estate, £16.99 Abdulrazak Gurnah was the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2021 and this is his first novel since. It centres on three young people growing up in 1990s Zanzibar, Gurnah's homeland. One of them is tempted into a betrayal that will change their lives forever. Bloomsbury, £18.99 This new title from Robert Macfarlane is considered by many in the know to be the non-fiction publication of the year. Its premise is that rivers are not simply for human use but living beings in themselves. Macfarlane ranges from Ecuador to Quebec to the chalk stream a mile from his own home. Hamish Hamilton, £25 It would be hard not to love a book with this title and, happily, Elizabeth Lovatt has done it proud. It is partly a memoir about her own realisation that she is gay (she writes a list of signs that include 'Penises look weird (do all women think this?)'. She also takes the logbooks from calls made to a lesbian helpline between 1993 and 1998 as inspiration for writing her own versions — this sidesteps the ethics of publishing calls to an anonymous service while giving us an insight into queer life at the time. Lovatt has striven to be inclusive and this is a warm, thoughtful book. Dialogue, £20 Alice is a part-time cleaner who has contempt for her clients, 'taking underwear at random. I liked to imagine their tuts […] or looking with increased panic for those lucky leopard-print briefs'. Tom is different — although they have never met, she has cleaned his flat every Wednesday morning for a year and quickly become fixated. Studying photos of him left around his home, she decides his eyes are the exact same shade as his velvet sofa. There is no way this can end well. This is a novel best read in an intoxicating, headlong rush. Fleet, £16.99
