From what I recall, Fathom got its start by doing live streams of all kinds of events, not just the met opera.

If they’ve moved into traditional digital media delivery (either downloadable or physically delivered), that rules. That’s all the assurance I need.

It still seems like a big get for Fathom, though. With all the consolidation going on, I figure studios would be salivating to get their hooks into Laika if it weren’t all run on private Nike money.

Maybe it is possible for a production company to be run for the love of the game.

David Burke, the Laika’s Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, said, “’Wildwood’ is a testament to Laika walking its own path.” He added, “For ‘Wildwood,’ we’re taking a more customized approach to how we bring the film to audiences, matching partners to the specific needs and ambitions of the project. Partnering with Fathom’s Denver-based team brings national perspective and operational strength to the U.S. release, while working with FilmNation internationally positions the film with scale, reach, and deep expertise in global markets. It’s a strategy built specifically for ‘Wildwood,’ preserving Laika’s independence while aligning with world-class collaborators to support the film’s ambition.”

Going with Fathom seems like a peculiar choice. I associate them with theatrical live streams and low-low distribution re-releases.

My immediate question is about the quality of the picture we’re going to get. I don’t associate streaming with high bitrate anything, but I suppose that’s what the Coraline and ParaNorman re-releases were meant to test out.

I just hope it sees a wide release.

One of the best cinema experiences I’ve had in the last few years was going to a 10:30 am screening of The Brutalist, with an intermission and a head-up on how many ads and trailers were being shoved in before the show started.

John Carter didn’t deserve the hate it got. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it got done dirty.

Well I’m so glad you asked!!

You’re looking at one in the screenshot. Firefox does this, as does Chrome and some other browsers as well.

A bookmark keyword is a tiny bit of text that you can configure your browser to treat differently when you use it in the location bar.

Typically, whatever you type into the browser location bar will either treat that text like a website you’re trying to go to (like “apnews.com” or “ www.wikipedia.org ”) or text that gets sent to a search engine (like “tasty dinner ideas” or “best white socks”). However, if the text you enter starts with a bookmark keyword you’ve set up, the browser will insert the rest of the text you entered into a website address in a specified place.

This is typically useful to speed up searching on specific websites.

So if you want to search Wikipedia for “particle physics”, you can go to the Wikipedia website and enter “particle physics” into the search box and click the search button. That would send you to a page with search results of the text you entered. If you look at the location bar, you should see a URL that looks like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=particle+physics

What we notice here is that the text you entered, “particle physics” is right there in the URL.

To turn this into a bookmark keyword, you create a bookmark to this search results page, then replace your search term with the characters “%s”, so the bookmark URL would look like so:

Then, in the “keyword” box, you can enter whatever text you want to use for this shortcut. For Wikipedia, I like using just the letter ‘w’. (You don’t need quotes around it.) Save the bookmark, and that’s it.

Now, whenever you want to search Wikipedia, all you have to do is type “w particle physics” or “w forest fires” or “w whatever” into the location bar and the browser will take you directly to the search page with those results.

You can do this with basically any website with search functionality: search engines, retail stores, news, IMDb, reference resources, whatever.

This feature also can be used for going to detail pages directly if you have a specific reference number.

So let’s say you’re at work and you have a trouble ticketing system that shows details of ongoing issues. The URL for ticket number q-rt-654321 might look like this:

https://troubletickets.mycompanyfoo.biz/ticket/q-rt-654321/view

So if you had the ticket number handy (like from an email chain), you could create a bookmark keyword to go directly to the ticket detail page:

https://troubletickets.mycompanyfoo.biz/ticket/%s/view

…and use the keyword “tt” for trouble ticket.

Now you can just type “tt q-rt-654321” into the location bar and go right to the detail page (presuming the ticket number is accurate).

And that’s it.

Somebody at work showed me keyword shortcuts ages ago and I have tons of them now.

45 days isn’t long enough to create the urge and FOMO that audiences need to endure the inconvenience, cost and drudgery of the modern theatrical experience.

For this to work for theaters: minimum 3 months, ideally 6 months.

But I’m an art house nerd. I’d much rather focus my movie budget on supporting independent films that only ever get minuscule distribution. Unless one lives in a big city, you’re never going to see those kind of movies in your local village multiplex. Streaming makes those films available in any home with an internet connection, and that’s pretty great for access. Younger generations of cinephiles are feasting. I just hope they’re also finding community. My youthful experience of finding like-minded folks while hunting down underground screenings of rare movies and independent video stores isn’t something that people get to do anymore. There’s letterboxd and discord I guess; it’s not the same.

Has Carol ever flat out asked The Others† to sever their connection? That it would make her happy to return the human race to autonomy? I suddenly don’t recall them ever telling her “No” at any point.

† “The Others” is how Vince & co refer to the hive (ref).

Careful not to mention trans folks…

😮‍💨 🚁 ☢️ 🫢

The Guardian claims that there are some redacted documents that can un-redacted by copying the text and pasting it into another window. Also, in other documents, photoshop can be used to enhance features of the redacted portions of text to reveal potential characters being covered.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-media

Back when usb was first appearing on boards, some cases had their usb port cables broken out into individual pins that you needed to place in the correct order.

The entity is absolutely, deliberately manipulating Carol through social isolation. The collective knows what social isolation does to people; there’s a million or so therapists it can draw that info from. There are also many ways to perhaps combat it that they could be offering to Carol, but they aren’t doing that. The entity has its own agenda, likely a set of Asimov-esque rules of robotics, serving a primary goal of propagation (with most of the human race out building satellites and radio antennas powered by solar to blast the signal further).

Traveling logistics. For the entity to be able to deliver items to Carol while she is on the road so quickly, I imagine there’s a fleet of cargo trucks following her around, just a few miles behind her (beyond her view), with delivery drones ready to fetch and deliver whatever she asks for.

You think this show is slow? There is a big difference between a series that is paced with deliberation to cultivate a tone and establish character motivation… and a series that is just insufferably drawn out. I remember Serial Experiments Lain. Pluribus is fine.

As a reminder:

Angel, previously Angel Studios, previously VidAngel, was founded by Latter-Day Saint family (Mormon) members to produce content that was suitable to show their kids. They later made a business out of editing Hollywood films to allow viewers to skip or mute scenes they found objectionable (without the consent of the rights-holders), and got their pants sued off for it.

After a series of mergers, it’s now a publicly traded company worth over $1.5 billion and continues to produce content that aligns heavily with religious and faith-based causes.

Inflation is real. Revenue milestones mean nothing.

For fuck’s sake people…

Here’s the ad: https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34728882/its-the-most-terrible-time-of-the-year/mcdonalds

It was the migration from cooking demonstrations to celebrity presence content (Babsih tries every X, Babish ranks every Y).

Cooking demos keep the focus on the food; techniques, presentation, and results. Plus having an entertaining and charismatic host.

Now those videos lean on the now-recognizable host being entertaining and charismatic, and doing… whatever. And it kind of makes sense in a marketplace-y sort of way. I can watch anybody cook, but Babish has the corner on Babish content, so why not lean into that? Also I’m sure the guy gets tired of making the same content over and over again, so he’s trying to find something interesting that catches on.

I see Nat from Nats What I Reckon doing the same thing. And good on them for trying new stuff.

Let me be as clear as I can be.

Trump, a figure visibly and egregiously unfit for the role of leading the nation, was elected by Americans, twice, fair and square by the rules we’ve set for ourselves. But he’s just a figurehead.

Press “freedom” has been hacked by monied interests to capture the minds of a vast margin of the American voting public and brainwash them into distrusting any media but their own, which has taught them to believe lies, parrot talking points and armed them with thought-collapsing rhetoric to disrupt anyone who might help unfuck their poisoned brains. All this has been going on for decades, but the internet really just helped tie it all together, providing the perfect echo chamber that no one ever has to leave.

The net result is a captured government focused on destroying their greatest weakness: agents and sources of truth. Massive media consolidation destroys the national news-gathering apparatus and controls the entertainment diet to restrict subversive content, and the implosion of the department of education ensures more and more future adults will grow up never having had the benefit of a robust education.

So are we fucked? Maybe. But bumping off politicians isn’t the answer.

Yeah, I can think of a hundred reasons why that would be a bad idea. Then again, I’m really tired of these 2.5+ hr movies with no break.

The intermission during The Brutalist was such a treat.

Theaters can survive… but they’ll need to change.

1. Fuck off with the pre-roll ads. Abusing a captive audience that literally paid to be there was a shitty move in the first place, but now that people have the easy option of staying home, it’s not something that can be afforded any longer.

2. Fewer screens. The multiplex isn’t the future. Movie houses with 1-3 screens will be the ones to survive.

3. Accommodate breaks. Construct auditoriums that allow people to get a toilet break without missing the show – integrate bathrooms into auditoriums, innovate with quiet/silent plumbing & ventilation, and pump the movie audio into the bathrooms. Controversial take: experiment with inserting intermissions.

4. Lean heavily into multi-use. Theater owners should strive to integrate live sports, television premieres & finales and live performances (drama, music, etc) into their venue’s event calendar.