'Historic' Disney+ streaming launch marred by glitches

News Network
November 13, 2019

Los Angeles, Nov 13: Disney flung open its vast archive with the arrival of its much-hyped new television streaming service Tuesday, but the big launch was marred by glitches which prevented many customers accessing titles from Mickey Mouse cartoons to Star Wars.

The introduction of Disney+ marks a huge bet by the media-entertainment giant, pitching it into direct conflict with on-demand services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime which have disrupted the Hollywood media landscape.

It went live overnight on televisions, tablets and smartphones across the US and Canada, featuring thousands of movies and TV episodes from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and National Geographic.

Disney chief Bob Iger called the launch "a historic moment for our company that marks a new era of innovation and creativity." But after a series of posts on social media from users unable to watch, Disney acknowledged problems with the rollout, saying it was due to strong demand.

"The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high expectations," the company said in a statement. "We are pleased by this incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience." The real-time web monitoring service Downdetector reported at least 8,000 problems accessing Disney+ by 1400 GMT.

Dozens of Twitter users posted messages about the glitches, some using images of the Disney film "Ralph Breaks the Internet," or the hashtag #DisneyPlusFail. Others complained of long wait times trying to contact technical support.

Excited fans had stayed up until the small hours to be among the first to watch "The Mandalorian," a new live-action Star Wars television series which is among a handful of Disney+ exclusives available at launch.

In early reviews, the Los Angeles Times called the first episode "safe-but-entertaining," describing it as "long on impressive special effects and alien shootouts, and short on a fresh storyline." Vanity Fair praised the pilot's action sequences but found the show "lacking the achingly human element of the 'Star Wars' universe." New episodes will be released each Friday.

Traditional Hollywood studios like Disney until recently have been happy to pocket billions by selling streaming rights for their titles to the likes of Netflix and Amazon. With the launch, Disney will now forgo an estimated $5 billion in revenues from those streaming rights deals, and instead, charge users directly for access to its archive of television and film content.

Disney is undercutting most rivals with a monthly price of $6.99, or $12.99 packaged with Hulu and its sports service ESPN+.

Disney+ will be rolled out to Australia and New Zealand next week, and most of western Europe in March. The company expects to have between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by 2024.

While some of Disney's previous rights deals are yet to expire -- for example, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" remains on Netflix in the US for now -- Disney+ will be the "exclusive streaming home for films released by The Walt Disney Studios in 2019 and beyond," the company said.

Netflix boss Reed Hastings has said that his company welcomes the competition. "I'm not saying we worry about them, we admire them," he told the Dealbook conference in New York last week. "I'll subscribe, they've got great shows." Warner Bros parent company AT&T is following a similar strategy with its May launch of "HBO Max," while Universal Pictures parent Comcast is also set to introduce "Peacock" next year. "Obviously there will be a lot of players out there," said Clark Spencer, president of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

"But I think for us having that depth of that library and the storytelling talents that sit within the studio, it's really gonna be what sets us apart," he told AFP at the recent "Frozen II" world premiere in Los Angeles.

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News Network
February 12,2020

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Mumbai, Apr 24: A complaint has been filed with police against Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut for allegedly referring to members of a particular community as a terrorist in a video released in support of her sister Rangoli Chandel, an official said on Friday.

The complaint was filed by a lawyer, Ali Kashif Khan Deshmukh, at the suburban Amboli Police Station on Wednesday.

The Twitter account of Chandel, who is also the 33- year-old actor's manager, recently got suspended for alleged hate speech.

According to the complaint, while supporting her sister, Ranaut, in the video, allegedly referred to members of a particular community as "terrorist", the official said.

Ranaut had released the video some time back.

Following the release of the video, Deshmukh submitted an application to the Amboli police seeking registration of a case against the actor, the official said.

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News Network
April 3,2020

Washington, April 3: American actor Kristen discussed her experience being isolated with husband and their two kiddos.

According to Fox News, the 39-year-old actor discussed how she and Shepard are finding quarantine to be a little tough in a video chat to Entertainment Tonight.

Bell admitted: "We've gotten on each other's last nerve these last couple days. We're doing much better now because were laughing about it. But when we were not laughing about it for the first couple of days, that's the hard spot."

The 'Bad Mom' actor then shared her thoughts on why quarantining with loved ones can be so tough. She explained that she loves spending time with her husband and he loves spending time with her.

But what she thinks is different about this quarantine time is you have so much more time to think about the other persona and their actions and sort of replay what they said or attach a meaning to something that they did.
Bell added: "Nobody really needs time for that. That's useless."

The 'Frozen' actor also discussed having to make adjustments in regards to her kids, 7-year-old Lincoln, and 5-year-old Delta, and the schedule she tried to keep once the quarantine began.

She said that the biggest lesson she learnt, in the beginning, was that she wrote out the colour coded schedule, and noted about when will be their academic and academic time.

Kristen explained that by day five of schedule, she was making everybody miserable. About a week ago, she woke her kids up and encouraged her daughters to rip up the schedule, explaining that the kids "felt so good."

"I said the learning lesson here is that if you make a plan and it's not working, you pivot," said Bell.

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