“People rated aspirationally, but they watched situationally. Yes, you did give That Important Documentary five stars when you got around to watching it, but at the end of a trying day at the office, you more often settled on viewing some pleasing pap like “The Ridiculous 6.” This sort of virtue signaling, often undercut by divergent behavior, is everywhere — witness the discrepancies that sometimes occur between polling and actual voting in elections.”
Category: media
Creator Of “Smash” Writes About Getting Fired From The Show
“Let me tell you something. When Steven Spielberg calls your agent to say he is infatuated with your writing, that is a good day. The saga of what came next is so long and complicated it would take a book to write it all out. Sometimes I think of writing that book and sometimes I think that writing that book and reliving the whole thing would be somewhat akin to shooting myself in the head.”
What’s The Problem With Bingeing On S-Town, The New Show From The People Who Brought Us Serial?
With the full show getting released at the same time – like a Netflix dump – “it induces a sense of sudden, ephemeral ubiquity, at least within a certain cultural bubble. Conversations about the show will burn hot for a few weeks around its release, and if you don’t immediately start binge-listening, you’ll miss the social experience of it.”
Why Do Cartoon Characters Only Have Three Fingers? [VIDEO]
Disney animators say, “It’s simply economy of line. Dropping one finger makes a huge difference.”
This Is Why Actors Were Wandering Around Astor Place With Mirrored Cubes On Their Heads
(Hint: It’s for a movie.) “The plan was announced, and the cubes came out. Each had five mirrored sides, with elasticized black fabric on the bottom that hugged wearers’ necks. Built-in bicycle helmets held the cubes in place, and the front panels were two-way mirrors, so the actors could see where the heck they were going.”
The Dominican Republic Is Kicking Its Movie Production Into High Gear
With an average of 20 films and takes of $50 million in five years, the country is seeing, perhaps, the results of a new law, “more than dramatic in a country that saw an average of two-to-three homegrown films a year for nearly three decades prior to the film law.”
Turns Out Video Games Are *Not* Addictive
Wait. What? They’re really not, though. Playing in what seems like an addictive way “is normal behavior that, while perhaps in many cases a waste of time, is not damaging or disruptive of lives in the way drug or alcohol use can be.”
Why Do Your Friends Insist On Forcing Their Favorite TV Shows On You?
“Watching TV is fun, talking about TV is fun — it’s all great fun. But I’ve begun to dread these four words: Wait, you haven’t seen —-? Fill in the blank with the current or classic prestige show of your choice: Mad Men, The Wire, Stranger Things, whatever. The second someone says this, the TV banter takes on an irritatingly insistent tone, with everyone present who has watched the show piling on the person who admits that they have not, until this poor soul agrees that, yes, okay, they’ll finally start watching Westworld. This weekend. Promise. It’s supposed to rain, anyway.”
Is This Really A Surprise?
“A report from the Motion Picture Association of America found that the number of African-Americans who go to the movies frequently (at least once a month) hit its highest mark in 2016 with 5.6 million, up nearly two million from 2015.”
Podcasts Are Hugely Popular Right Now. Why?
“Many of those podcasts are destined to sail out into the ocean and never be heard from again. They are often too detailed, too niche, too chatty. A lot of people produce podcasts in which they simply ramble on for hours about themselves and their lives. There is something very poignant about the volume of human desire to be heard out there in the Wild West of podcasts. One gets the impression that for many podcasters, audience size is almost irrelevant. The point is to put your voice on record (which is now easy and cheap to do), and leave it there for someone to find, ponder, and perhaps even enjoy.”