Johanna Blakley

Former United Artists' chief Steven Bach spoke at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities yesterday about his new book on the infamous Nazi propagandist filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. When asked what most surprised him about Riefenstahl, Bach mentioned two things: first, that she really did dig Mein Kampf (she always claimed that she'd barely read it) and second, that she was, without a doubt, the most powerful filmmaker in the history of show business.

Johanna Blakley

Doesn't it seem like interactive games would be excellent teaching tools? I know I'm a little biased -- I used to work in the educational games industry -- but I don't think you have to be a C++ programmer to realize the educational potential of this technology. I helped develop computer games that teach kids how to add, subtract, multiply, type, create grammatical sentences, speak French, Spanish . . . you name it. Of course some games were a lot more fun than others, but it seemed to me there was no way this technology wouldn't transform education.

But that didn't happen. Sales in educational software plummeted from $498 million in 2000 to $152 million in 2004. Most of the educational brands that hogged Wal-Mart end-caps in the late nineties don't even exist anymore.

I hoped to find out why at the Workshop on Games for Learning, Development & Change at the Annenberg School. Scholars presented fresh research about "serious games" and, while hope is alive, the news was often very discouraging.

Johanna Blakley

As the Cannes Film Festival winds down, many were shocked that a small Romanian film about communism and abortion beat out the Coen Brothers' adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel for the much coveted Palm d'Or. But it brought to the fore a trend in the global film business that might not be apparent to the average US movie-goer. While the US global blockbuster is still very much alive, local-language films have gained a stronger foothold in several key markets and -- here's the kicker -- Hollywood is actually fuelling the trend.