Category: media

Connor Towne O’Neill travels to Woodstock, Alabama to ask the folks there about finding themselves the subject of a record-smashing podcast – and finds some fair-mindedness, some defensiveness, plenty of ambivalence and even more awkwardness. After all, they really do all know each other. (Warning: includes spoilers)

“This is a decision long in the making and not an easy one. I’ve had the greatest job I can think of, working with the finest colleagues anyone could ask for, for as long a stretch as I could imagine. But, looking ahead to my seventies (which start all too soon) I feel that it is time for me to begin a new phase of life. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out what that will be.”

Director Kevin Smith says, “The weird thing about it is, you know, when you look at it now – to borrow a term from the present – it was very woke for 1997.” Queer critics didn’t agree: as Shannon Keating sums it up here, “Ultimately, the film assumes that a lesbian can go straight, even if just for a little while, as soon as the right guy comes along.” But then, Keating continues, “Questions about how to define different queer identities, the possibilities and limits of sexual fluidity, and what mysterious chemistry drives attraction are as much a part of the contemporary queer conversation as they were in the mid-’90s. Chasing Amy was, in many ways, ahead of its time.”

“The British Library has launched a preservation and access project which will save almost half a million rare and unique recordings which are threatened by physical degradation or stored on formats which can no longer be played. … Recordings include oral histories from WWI and WWII, Cornish brass bands, local dialect from the UK regions, drama and literature readings, regional radio, traditional music, pirate radio recordings, music from around the world and the sounds of rare and extinct species.”

“Niche reality shows reveal a range of American cultures and give the audience a new experience: the chance to plunge into others’ unfamiliar realities. Dividing “reality” into ever more microscopic fields, the joyously weird new contest shows celebrate the deviations from the normal, amplifying a subculture’s arcana to stadium size. A cynic might cavil that networks are merely exploiting the American viewer’s new taste, trained by social media, for variety and distinctiveness.”

A last-minute deal could happen, but “if writers walk off the job, scores of productions would be halted at a time when Los Angeles is enjoying a surge in the number of TV shows that shoot in the region.”

And the #deleteUber movement gets more fuel for its fire: “The practice, called fingerprinting, is prohibited by Apple. To prevent the company from discovering the practice, Uber geofenced Apple headquarters in Cupertino, changing its code so that it would be hidden from Apple Employees.”

Which fan group’s illegal copies and iffy translations would get released? How would all of the anime fans come together to watch said illegal copies with iffy translations? And if they did, would cosplay – dressing up as a character from the anime series in question – be allowed?

Whoa. “PureFlix.com offers bingeable programming like ‘The American Bible Challenge,’ a game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy; ‘Family Affair,’ a sitcom starring Brian Keith that ran from 1966 to 1971; ‘The Encounter,’ a Pure Flix original scripted series about people who are visited by Jesus; and stand-up comedy from Sinbad and Louie Anderson. Next up is ‘Hilton Head Island,’ a soap opera starring Antonio Sabato Jr.”

“Raw” is the French director Julia Ducournau’s first feature film, and it’s already made waves. Here’s how she made the coming-of-age cannibal film, from getting the actors to bond through horror and beer to recreating the feel of a college down, aka places that “swim in the organic, heaving messiness of teens.”