Dealing With A Streaming Film Release During The Pandemic Isn’t Ideal For Cast Or Crew

When directors, cast, and crew make decisions about a movie like High Note, they’re aimed at the big screen. So this weekend’s on-demand streaming release is a bit of a technical let-down, even if the content offers some lighter fare than reality right now. Director Nisha Ganatra:”The movie was shot anamorphic and widescreen, so it’s really a big-screen experience. All of the sound engineers made the concert scenes to feel like you’re right there. … I definitely need people to turn up the sound system and not just watch it on the iPad!” – Los Angeles Times

Unions Have A Say In Hollywood’s Potential Return To Work

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced more than a week ago that counties could set reopening plans for the entertainment industry. That hasn’t happened because Hollywood’s various unions are pretty clear that the industry won’t get to shortchange safety. But “the high-wire act for the unions is that while they have a great deal of power, they also have members who’ve been idle for months and are itching to get back to work.” – Los Angeles Times

The Yeats Test

How bleak is it out there? Well, how many politicians are quoting Yeats’s “The Second Coming”? And the poet made it that way deliberately: “Early drafts of the poem illustrate Yeats’s dedication to universalising his message, as he deletes specific references to the French Revolution and the first world war and replaces terrestrial images of judges and tyrants with figures from dreams and myths.” – The Guardian (UK)